Role of the Master

in Human Evolution

(Proceedings of the Sahaj Marg Seminars

held at Vorauf-Munich, Paris and Marseilles
from 28 June to 13 July 1986)

Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari

Shri Ram Chandra Mission

Chennai, India
© 2014 by Shri Ram Chandra Mission
Manapakkam, Chennai – 600 125

All rights reserved

Published under licence by

Spiritual Hierarchy Publication Trust
Kolkata – 700 027

First Edition: 1986

Reprinted 1987, 1994, 2011
This reprint 2014 (3,000 copies)

ISBN: 978-93-83516-20-9

Printer:
Kailash Paper Conversion,
Ranchi, India
Contents
Publisher's Note

Talks on the Role of the Master in Human Evolution

1. Vorauf, 28 June 1986

2. Vorauf, 29 June 1986
3. Vorauf, 2 July 1986
4. Vorauf, 3 July 1986
5. Marseilles, 8 July 1986
6. Marseilles, 9 July 1986
7. Marseilles, 11 July 1986
8. Marseilles, 12 July 1986
9. Marseilles, 13 July 1986 — Morning
10. Marseilles, 13 July 1986 — Afternoon

Talks in Paris, 4 – 6 July 1986

11. Obedience
12. Religion and Spirituality
13. Spiritual Love
14. Living Death

Questions and Answers, Vorauf, 30 June – 2 July 1986

15. Meditation on the Form

16. Jealousy
17. Praying for a Sick Person
18. Deserving a Master
19. Guilt
20. Family Life
21. Anger and Greed
22. Praying to Jesus
23. Dealing with Illness
24. Duty
 Publisher's Note
In 1986, Shri Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari gave a series of talks in Germany and
France about the role of the Master in spirituality, in human life and in human
evolution.

The Role of the Master in Human Evolution is one of the cornerstone books of the
Mission, being dedicated solely to the great personality of the Master and, in
particular, to Babuji Maharaj. Shri P. Rajagopalachari says in the first talk, "If there is
one thing more important than truth, than spirituality itself, it is the Master who gives it
to us."

Shri P. Rajagopalachari reminds us that masters "come far before their time." He
provides insights to help us develop our own relationship with the master, for
example, "A master is not a teaching that we can read about him and understand him. A
master is not a practice that we can practice him and understand him. Being a living
person, we have to live with him and understand his life and benefit from his
presence. Therefore, the Master had to go again and again, as many times as he could
to as many places as he could, to show himself. And that is why Babuji used to tell us
again and again what Kabir had said hundreds of years ago, that even if the Master is
living next door to the disciple and only one wall is separating their houses, yet the
disciple must lock his house for one week and go and live with the Master."

These talks provide wonderful insight and guidance to all seekers of the Divine on
the essential role of the spiritual Master in that journey.
Talks on the Role of the
Master in Human
Evolution
 1
Vorauf, 28 June 1986
I would like to start off this session by speaking about something that is very close to
our hearts, all of us here; one whom we loved very much, whom we still love very
much, our Master. Many of you have had the good fortune to have been with him for
many years, and what I am going to say will not be very new to you; but at the same
time, when we talk about the same thing again and again, it has two benefits. The first
one is that anything which is worth saying can be said again and again, it need not be
new every time. The second thing is that by repeatedly saying it, it strengthens the
feeling in us of what we should have.

It is my experience that many people who are requested to speak on such occasions
are afraid of failure. They also fail because they look for something new to speak
about every time. The old ideas, you know — whenever we talk of wisdom, we talk
of ancient wisdom, mature wine! And it is no less true about the truths of this world,
about the wisdom, that the more they age and mature, the more wise they become. So,
we have a subject which is an eternal subject — spirituality.

So, as I was saying, we have the subject which is eternally valid, eternally
necessary; that is the spiritual truth, spirituality itself. And for that we depend on one
who gives it to us — the Master. Therefore, if there is one thing more important than
truth, than spirituality itself, it is the Master who gives it to us. In modern life we are
familiar with self-service shops, automats, things like that. But I do not think there will
ever be a time when we can get spirituality like that. Therefore, the importance of the
Master, our spiritual life, and this all the ancient traditions have emphasized again and
again. The first truth has always been, "Look for Him who can give it." And this truth
my Master, our Master, has repeated again and again, "Search for Him, and when you
find Him, your job is over." The Master gives to us in several ways. He gives to us by
teaching us; he gives to us by being a living example of what we should be; and he
gives to us by giving himself. So, we learn from the Master at three levels: what he
teaches us — what he teaches us by his writings, by his words; what he shows us by
living the life that we should live ourselves; and what he gives us from within himself,
putting it into our inner self, which we cannot see very often.

Now it is a well-known fact that everything rises in importance as it rises in level

(raises itself in the level of existence). At the lower level it is less important, at the
higher level it becomes more important, at the highest level it is the most important.
Therefore, what we get from him by word of mouth, by his books, by the teachings,
though it is very important, yet it is the least important of the ways he gives to us. What
he teaches us by his living, the example of his life, is more important than the last
stage. The highest gift, of course, is what he gives us in his transmission, which is
invisible, imperceptible, unknowable.

Now, here comes a problem, (here we have one of the operations of the principle
of invertendo), because we have been taught that what we can see, what we can feel,
is more important than what we do not see and feel, you see. Also, our intellect tells
us that the intellectual teachings are more important than something we do not feel.
The teachings appear more important than what we cannot see and feel, you see.
Therefore, what happens is we give the greatest importance to the least important part
of the Master, and little or no importance to the highest level of his existence, his
spiritual Self.

This is perhaps the most important reason for our failure, because we judge the
Master by what he says, what he writes, and they do not stand comparison with so-
called philosophy. There are much better books written, much more difficult to
understand, and one of the modern diseases is to think that anything which is more
difficult must be better. So his teaching does not impress us, because it is my
experience, too, along with so many of yours, that when you compare him to the
famous philosophers — even in India, Shankara, for instance, or Ramanuja or the
Western philosophers — his does not look like philosophy at all. Then when we come
to his example of his existence, we have similar problems, because again his mortal
existence was not something which was in the original sense of the word "exemplary"
not an exemplar, you see. It was a simple life, an unassuming life, lived at the lowest
level of physical existence, and for those of us who have been exposed to
philosophers in their studies, in their garden, near their swimming pool, libraries
filled with books, the Master's life was nothing, you see.

So, at the first two levels, our Master, it was not surprising, if he failed to impress
us. When we come to the highest level, the spiritual level, it is a little different. I make
bold to say that some of us who are here are here, because we felt something of his
transmission, something of the love he poured into us, and that was because of our
sensitivity. And when that came into us and developed us spiritually, then we were
able to see his teaching in the proper perspective, understand his life in its proper
perspective. Therefore the first teaching that emerges from the Master's life is: accept
his spiritual transmission first, and forget the rest. It is a merciful thing that we do not
have to understand the transmission, we have only to receive it. And when we receive
it with an open heart it gives us the necessary inner transformation which facilitates
our understanding of the lower levels of his existence, of the lower levels of his
teaching, his existence. It becomes possible for us, the inner transformation that it
effects, and that makes it possible for us to understand the lower levels of his teaching.

So this is the invertendo principle: that we must understand the highest first, before
we can understand the lowest. His spiritual existence is transmitted into us and makes
us grow like him, become like him, and that makes it possible for us to understand
what he is teaching us, and that makes us understand why he lives the way he lives.
Now this is not such a profound secret as it appears to be. Even in our ordinary human
life, when we start loving someone, then we are able to understand the person. But if
you want to understand everything about the person, why he or she lives in the way she
lives, and then we want to love, it fails. That is, to put it in one sentence, love makes
all understanding possible, but understanding does not create love. Similarly the
spiritual growth makes physical life understandable, intellectual necessities
understandable, but not the other way.

So the first lesson, when we want to pursue a spiritual life, is — accept the
Master's spiritual transmission. We must be able to suspend all intellectual and other
judgements till we have grown spiritually, and all those who have been successful
with my Master in their spiritual life have been such persons. Whereas all those who
wanted to judge him in the physical life and in the intellectual life, they have left
almost immediately or very soon thereafter. Those who want physical perfection,
physical allurements, physical beauties, things like that, they find it elsewhere, you
see. Those who seek intellectual values, intellectual stimulation, intellectual vastness,
they find it in the universities, professors, libraries, they go there, you see. Therefore
we are left in Sahaj Marg, inevitably, with only that small portion of humanity which
is prepared to receive the essence and wait to make a judgement in the future. This is
not a natural thing.

We must accept, you see. Because all our education is to judge in the opposite way.
Life itself teaches us, "Touch it, taste it, examine it, and then accept." It is the price we
have to pay for having evolved from the lower levels of life to the human life, to the
human level of existence. In a sense, therefore, it is a samskara, because children do
it, animals do it, you know! They have to touch it, lick it, taste it, smell it, things like
that, before they will take it up, accept it. If we look at it in that way, we come to a
very strange conclusion, a conclusion which is not only surprising but can even be
shocking. It means that we are bringing into the human level, the animal ways of
assessing something. I am sure very few people will accept this. Perhaps nobody will
accept it. Because it is a tremendous shock to our ego to imagine that all our training,
all our culture, all our education, is only a prolongation or an extension of animal
faculties. However sensitive our sense of touch, it is an animal sense. The same thing
goes for the sense of taste, smell, sight, everything, you see.

So we have this very peculiar situation which emerges, that we look at existence as
three levels: the sub-human level, the human level, and the superhuman levels. And we
are in the middle level, the human level. All the faculties available to us for judging a
thing, for evaluating a thing, are carried over from the lower subhuman level. And
with these faculties, however well developed they may be, we have to judge the
higher existence which is the superhuman existence.

Now here comes the second astonishing fact: that those who are not so well
developed, who have not so much education, who have not so much culture, are easily
able to succeed in spirituality, because of two or three factors. The most important is
they know their faculties are not so well developed, therefore they don't depend upon
them. Now perhaps we can realize and understand why the great masters of the world
were not intellectuals, were not much educated, were not rich, nothing of these things.
The circumstances of their human existence made them throw away these things, set
them aside; but of course, that alone is not enough for the spiritual life. They had the
inner craving to develop into the superhuman existence, and this enormous craving in
the heart, combined with a distrust of all the human faculties, made them develop that
which is most essential — faith. It made them set aside all the human faculties of
judgement as something not enough and made them develop that faith.

Therefore, the secret of becoming like the masters is to have the craving and
develop the faith. What is the proof that it is the only way of becoming like the
masters? It is self-evident that no great master was rich, nor intellectual, he had no
libraries, he had no degree in education, he never went to a university, he was not a
super-miler, things like that. (Miler, tunnel, physical giants). The mistake we make is a
very simple mistake. We study the lives of these great masters through books, through
teachings, and we imagine that that study is going to make us like the masters. This is a
common mistake. We take a cook book, study how something is made and imagine we
have made it, you see. And this instinct, this belief, is being made use of by people
who write books, like "How to become a millionaire in four easy steps" — they
become millionaires!

So what is the conclusion? The conclusion is, that we must get from the life of these
masters, when we study their biography, that which they got from above. So that is the
only value that biography should give us. So, I look upon evolution in a different way,
this is my personal conclusion, you see. As the evolutionary stream goes forward, so
many appendages, attributes are developed by the side branches of the evolutionary
stream, but these side branches remain side branches. That which evolves is the tip
which goes forward without attributes, without appendages, without qualities — it
goes, keeps moving, you see. So if we want to be in the main evolutionary stream,
going ahead and ahead, on and on, we must forget all these things and keep going
ahead.

It is my second conclusion, personal conclusion, that if the human arm of evolution

is to fail, it will fail because of over-specialization. This is one more conclusion that
will certainly not be accepted, at least in the West, because specialization is very,
very dear to the Occidental heart, Occidental intellect. But we all know the tragedy of
overspecialization when we go to a doctor; there are few doctors today who could do
what we need to be done, as the old general practitioners could do. And it is also a
modern joke, in factories, that one who can put in a screw can only put in a screw,
then another man has to come and turn it. And the greatest danger, I repeat, of human
civilisation coming to an end, is this specialization. I think this is the greatest lesson
the masters teach us, "Don't specialize!" A rich man is only one who has specialized in
making money, Few rich men are even intelligent enough to know how they have made
their wealth. And the same thing applies to all specialists. Today, unfortunately, even
in the universities, the homes of learning, a specialist from one field cannot understand
a specialist in another field. So we have created a civilisation where the
specialization has been carried to such a ridiculous extent that no one can understand
each other any more.

So when we observe the life of our own Master, we come to this fundamental
conclusion — be simple and in tune with nature! If his life exemplified anything, it
was this truth. Accept all the faculties you have been endowed with, but don't trust
them. Use, them, knowing that they are all subject to extreme limitations. Every
beginner's book on psychology, you know, has these figures which show you how
poorly we see, parallel lines appearing to be bent, bent lines appearing to be parallel
— the vision is not to be depended upon. And this is our most acute sense; that which
we most depend upon is our vision.

So the masters have these faculties but they don't depend on them. They need vision
but they create an inner vision forgetting these eyes. They need to hear what the master
says, but they create an ear in the heart, they forget these ears. Now few people can go
and physically touch the master. How does he feel, is he soft, is he smooth? But
nevertheless, the need exists, they develop a different sense of touch, you see, again a
spiritual sense of touch. What is the conclusion? That all these things are necessary,
but they have to come in a higher way, in a more internal way than by these external
senses of ours. And these things can be given only by the Master through his
transmission which develops these faculties in us. And what is the greatest benefit?
That when we no longer have the physical Master, we can yet see him, we can yet hear
him, we can yet feel him, we are yet together with him.

So I would suggest that these physical powers that we are endowed with, blessed
with, they are to be used knowing their limitations. The maximum use they can give to
us is to lead us to a Master, no more than that. After that we forget them, permit Him to
develop in us the higher faculties, and then become one with Him. We leave them and
permit Him to develop in us the higher faculties which make us one. This is how the
masters developed, and this is how we have to develop, too. So that is one of the
lessons from a study of their lives.

Thank you.
 2
Vorauf, 29 June 1986
The subject of the Master can never be exhausted, and his life and his teachings are a
perennial source of instruction and guidance for us. Babuji Maharaj once said in
Munich, I think it was in 1980, somebody had asked him a question about revising his
books, and his answer was that his books needed no revision, and he also added that
the present generation would not easily understand his teaching, and that his books
would be really understood only thousands of years later. So this has been the secret
of the teachings of all masters, and the secret is that they come far before their time.
And the idea is that coming, say, two thousand years before they are due, they put us
into the future to that extent (project us into the future). It is as if a man of the future
comes into his own past which is our present. It is almost like the time travel of
science fiction.

You know, there is a story about a man, it is called The Sleeper Awakes. I don't
know how many of you have read it. The story is that a man takes a certain amount of
gold and goes back into the past, and having gone back several centuries, he invests
that gold in that past. And then he comes back into his own present, and that money he
has invested is growing and growing and growing. And when he goes to sleep and
wakes up the next morning, he owns the whole earth, the whole world, you see.

I think this is the way by which the masters cultivate us and make us their own.
What I am suggesting is that they are far ahead of us in evolution, and they deliberately
come to our present, this life, and invest their spiritual wealth in us, and when they
wake up again, we are the spiritual wealth they have sort of cultivated and grown and
harvested. In our own human situation we also do something similar to this. We have
the doctors, the missionaries, who go to the jungles with the primitive tribes, and they
live like them, learn their language, eat what they eat, they become like them, you see,
in all ways. But one thing they have which they cannot possibly lose or change, that is
their own culture, their own level of evolution and this they transfer to the primitives
and raise them to their own level. So, we are all doing the same work, but within our
own life span. And a teacher does it with the children — he comes down to the level
of the children and raises them to his own level of intellect, of education.

So what distinguishes a master from us is nothing except that we can do it only

within our own lifetime, he does it over thousands of years. We can only do it in our
life span, the masters do it over a period of thousands of years. And the important
thing to recognize is that it always involves a personal sacrifice of a very high order.
We make the same sacrifice, the masters make the same sacrifice, the difference is
only one of degree.

The second difference is in the approach. We do this work because of sympathy,

they do their work because of compassion. We are human beings working with human
beings very much on our own level, except that the degree of difference is not very
big. Primitive to modern times is not a big difference. But when a master descends, to
us the difference can be as if we go back to the amoeba, or something like that, and
work on them to make them human beings. And this is what makes communication so
difficult. You see, we can communicate, one human being with another human being,
we can communicate by gesture, by look, and with some difficulty we can learn a
language, too, if necessary. But imagine how difficult it will be, if a human being has
to become an amoeba and learn to communicate with that in such a way that the
amoeba must understand him.

So this is the magnitude of the task that a master undertakes, and we have examples
of similar work in human beings also. Human beings working with chimpanzees, with
gorillas, with porpoises, dolphins, all sorts of funny things. So you see, the ordinary
human being, when he becomes sympathetic to life around him, makes similar
endeavors. At the most selfish, self-centered level a human being is concerned only
with himself or herself. At a slightly higher level the human being is concerned with
other human beings. At a yet higher level they are concerned with other life forms
existing with us. But at the highest level such a personality is concerned with all life at
all times, past, present, future, it doesn't matter.

Now, if you understand this idea you will find, or you will realize, how small a
thing is the so-called social service among human beings. It is nothing except the
breaking of the shell of selfishness. We are always talking about social service.
People say, "I am doing good to others, why should I meditate?" But if they could be
made to understand this aspect of service, from the highest to the lowest, they will
themselves realize that it is very foolish to claim that they are serving humanity at all.
They will understand that they are only coming out of themselves and becoming human
beings. A chicken within the egg is not yet a chicken. It becomes a chicken only when
it breaks out of itself and comes out into the open. So we can say that one born as a
human being becomes a human being only when he thinks of others, stopping to think
of himself.

So, coming back to the masters again, we see how enormous a task they have
undertaken, because it is the masters who must make every single effort to raise us up.
The first sacrifice, the biggest sacrifice, is to come back to a level which they have
evolved out of thousands of years ago; and then they have to design the way of
teaching, the way of practice to make us come up to their level of evolution. For us it
is nothing, we just accept and learn, you see. This is why I am often very sad when
people say, "Oh, I have made such a sacrifice to come and see Babuji, and I have
made so much sacrifice to sit in meditation." What sacrifice? For whom? So, such an
attitude in an abhyasi or an ordinary person comes only because of a total ignorance
of the Master and his work. This is why I say again and again that it is not enough, or
necessary even, to understand his teaching, but it is necessarily to understand the
Master. Because the teaching of the Master is like the worm that you throw into the
water to bring a fish. It's nothing at all. I mean, having come down to this level, he can
design a thousand ways of teaching us; but to make us understand what he is, why he
has come to us, what he is going to do for us, this is an almost impossible task, even
for a master.

I was able to understand this myself only after a very long time, and it was because
I used to wonder why Babuji had to travel so much, because if his teaching was what
elevated us, all that we had to do was to print books and send them all over the world.
And if it was the practice that was to elevate us, then the preceptors were enough.
They can teach us the practice. But it is the Master who is the most important, in fact,
most vitally important element of this teaching; and to make us understand this Babuji
had to travel again and again, be present with us, show Himself to us and suffer for us.

We can understand a thought by reading about it, by thinking about it. We can
understand a practice and benefit from it by practicing it. But we can understand a
master only by living with him. A master is not a teaching that we can read about him
and understand him. A master is not a practice that we can practice him and
understand him. Being a living person, we have to live with him and understand his
life and benefit from his presence. Therefore the Master had to go, again and again, as
many times as he could to as many places as he could to show himself. And that is
why Babuji used to tell us again and again what Kabir had said hundreds of years ago,
that even if the Master is living next door to the disciple and only one wall is
separating their houses, yet the disciple must lock his house for one week and go and
live with the Master.

I used to wonder why this was necessary. After all, is it not enough that the Master
comes to us? You see, it is like this. Whether you come to me, or I come to you, what
difference does it make? There is a small difference. He comes to us because of his
divine love for us, and we begin to go to him only when we start to love him.
Therefore we find that as long as an abhyasi is concerned only with spiritual progress,
spiritual benefit, he doesn't bother to go to the Master. And it is true that they can get a
great deal of benefit by staying where they are. Because that is the benefit that the
teaching and the practice gives. But if an abhyasi wants to become like the Master he
has to go and live with the Master.

Now I would like to give you the example of a candle. The candle goes wherever
there is darkness and illuminates it. That is the Master going round and round to
illuminate us, our hearts. But can the darkness ever come to the candle to be
illuminated? That is what the Master waits for when the abhyasi comes to him. And
that miracle can happen only between human beings, not between darkness and light.
And it is made possible only when love comes into the heart of the abhyasi, because
then all idea of benefit, of growth, of getting something from the Master, they go. And
when love takes their place, then the abhyasi thinks what he can do for the Master,
what he can give to the Master.

Now this is another thing we should all examine very carefully, because even at the
human level there is a great deal of confusion about this love. We think love is getting.
But if we understand it correctly, we find love is giving, and the more one gives, the
more one loves, and we can therefore say with confidence that one gives totally when
one loves totally. And this is what the Master gives. He comes to us totally himself
and gives himself totally to us in an endeavor, in an effort, to make us like Himself.

The Master's presence is an expression of his total love for us. What he gives us,
totally without any reservation, without anything being asked for in return, is himself.
And this is the thing that he has to teach us also, that we become like him — not by
spiritual progress, you see, I am quite certain about this, that spiritual progress is only
a lure to draw us to himself, like you take a fish line and throw it and bring in the fish.
You see, his real effort is to make us divine lovers like himself. Lover means, one who
loves. And a divine lover is one who loves divinely, that means, without reservation,
without limitation, without anything to restrict it. That is why it is called universal
love. We have heard so often that universal love does not mean loving everything in
the universe. That can never be possible. But it is a love which is universal in its
effulgence,in its outflow from the source, and therefore we say God is love. We don't
say God loves, we say God is love. And this is the real effort of the Master, that he
wants to make us also divine lovers.

When he comes and gives us the teaching and the practice, they are the first steps in
this emancipation of ourselves from ourselves to the divine stage. You can understand
it by saying that when human beings love each other, they call it human love, and
divine love can be possible only between divine persons, divine beings. And, per
contra, when there is divine love between two persons, both must be divine. So when
we are able to love the Master as he loves us, it means we have become like him.

The proof of our having evolved to his level is not the performance of miracles, not
a superhuman strength, not beauty, not any of these attributes. The proof is when we
can love like him. So one test of a Master, if an abhyasi, or one who wants to become
an abhyasi, wants to find a Master, is to look for a man who is capable of universal
love. Unfortunately, we are taught the other things, you see. We are taught to look for
other things, strength, power, miracles, things like that. That is why all great masters
have warned us to beware of miracles. Miracles only indicate the presence of power
not love. That is why in all truly spiritual paths miracles are totally avoided. They are
not permitted.

Thank you.
 3
Vorauf, 2 July 1986
The Master's role in our lives is that of one who initiates the dormant forces of
evolution. I have been speaking about this to some of you separately, and given you my
idea that the human stage of life is something like an intermediate stage in the process
of evolution. We are told that life began in the ooze, what they call the ooze, in the
original oceans of this earth, millions of years back. It is called the primeval ooze.
Something like a soup, you can call it a soup. A mixture of everything, clay, this and
that — well, the primal matter, whatever it was, millions of years ago. And that life,
which began in the oceans, developed progressively until it resulted in the human
being.

Both science and mysticism agree on one thing, that the human being is the highest
form of evolution, so far. But the human being forgets the two words 'so far' and thinks
that this is the peak of evolution, which is a gross mistake. Now it is said that the
original life form evolved up to the present human form automatically, in the sense that
it did not have to think and to do something. The price that it had to pay was, of
course, the long, the enormously long, duration in time that it took. Now as far as the
evolution beyond the human life is concerned, science has no answer, of course; but
spirituality says, and our Master has also said, that once the human evolves into the
next stage then, again, evolution is automatic.

So we come to this interesting fact that an enormous level of evolution is there

below us, and equally enormous levels are there beyond us, but in between we are
stuck in some sort of a layer where evolution has to be by our wish. It is almost as if it
is a trap between two separate regions, and from this trap only the best go up. If you
think of it that way, it is also a region where selective evolution comes, this selection
being done by us ourselves when we choose to evolve. It seems as if we have been
given an opportunity to decide whether we will evolve or not, because after we cross
the human level, nature does not want unwilling participants any more, only willing
participants are accepted. So, in that sense, it is an area of selection from which only
those who are willing to evolve are taken up further, the rest remain and keep going
round and round. So this whole question of cycles of birth and death — rebirth as we
call it — is nothing but going round and round until the desire in us comes to go up,
and we leave it forever.

Now if we are left to ourselves, we may never know what is possible, what we can
achieve, what are the goals that lie before us, because, like the frog in the well, we
can imagine that is our whole universe. I think that it is for this reason that the Master
comes. It seems that the Master comes to tell us, "Don't think that this is all. However
wonderful it may be, this is not all. I represent something which is far higher than you
can ever imagine, and I have come to you to show you what that is, so that you may
aspire for it and seek my help in achieving it." This is very common. I mean it's not
difficult to understand, because once somebody does something, everybody else tries
to do the same thing.

You see, so long as Mt. Everest was not climbed it was thought it was impossible.
But the moment one man climbed it, everybody started climbing it. It is as if the first
man who does it shows us what is possible, and the rest are then able to achieve it. In
that sense the powers of evolution are already within us. It is not that we don't have
the requisite powers, it is only the need to help us to orient our powers in the right
direction. Therefore, I have never been able to accept the need for power to evolve,
and it is one of the most beautiful concepts in Sahaj Marg that the transmission is
described as forceless force, powerless power, things like that. It is necessary to bear
this in mind, because we find today so many systems treating or dealing with power,
and of course, the most important is in India, the Shakti path, as we call it. And it is a
well known fact that most of the aspirants of such systems end up in things other than
spirituality.

Now, if you look at the possibility of evolution from the human level up to the final
destination, there are several levels. And our Master has said that if you are liberated
you will have to live in other stages of evolution until you reach the goal. But he has
emphasized that it is possible to go to the ultimate goal directly also. So however high
liberation may be, it is not the goal of Sahaj Marg practice. Because, as I pointed out
to you the other day, if you think of evolution as a tree, there are branches and they
remain as branches. And we have the confirmation in our Indian philosophies that
even the so-called gods have to come back to human form to achieve their final
destination again. This is said very explicitly in all our spiritual literature in India.

That, incidentally, is another reason why it is futile to pray to such gods, because
they have to come back themselves here, and how are they going to help us? That is
why Master has described in Reality at Dawn that these gods are nothing but the
functionaries of nature. They are like the people who are in charge of villages, in
charge of cities, in charge of even whole countries, but they are there for some time,
and then they come back as ordinary citizens. Therefore Babuji repeatedly cautions us
against the worship of such gods. They are in charge of their respective functions, and
in those functions they are capable; they can do nothing more. Therefore, even if we
have to pray, Babuji says, pray to the Ultimate who is nameless, who is formless, who
has no qualities, no power, nothing. No power even, you see!

Now it may appear a little odd that we have to pray to the one who has no powers,
but we must remember that one who has power, or who is powerful, can become
powerless, that is, he is in a changeable state. Therefore, a god who has qualities,
however high or big they may be, is in a changeable condition himself, not in the
eternal condition. And the other important fact is that they have themselves come from
that eternal source which is nameless, formless, powerless, qualityless. Therefore our
goal is that Ultimate which Babuji calls the Centre, because then there are no ideas of
power and things like that which confuse us. When you speak of a god, we think of
powers; when you speak of the Centre, all these connotations are lost.

So, coming back to Babuji himself, we have the interesting fact that he was a human
being without what we think of as power in any sense. He was not highly educated. He
spent probably only six or seven years in school, as he himself told all of us so many
times. He did not have the power of money or influence or social position; nor did he
have physical strength. We have all seen him, and we know he was a small man, frail,
quite weak, often sick, so there was no question of physical powers in him. Before I
went to Babuji for the first time I used to imagine what a master should be, and I am
sure we all have had such similar fantasies, so much so, that when I first saw him, it
was quite a disappointment for me. But later when I thought about it, I understood that
it was necessary for Him to assume such a form. Because in all human achievement
some power or other is associated with it. If you see a man who has built a house or
has got a car, people say, "Yes of course, he can do it, he is rich." Somebody else
climbed the Matterhorn, or swam the English channel, we say "Yes, of course, he is
strong and powerful." So it has become a human idea, not only an idea, but it is deeply
ingrained in us to associate success or achievement with one power or the other that is
available to us.

Now we have to be assured that success in the spiritual adventure does not depend
on any human powers. In Sahaj Marg it is claimed that it is a system universally
applicable which can be practiced by any human being who is willing to practice it.
And this means that any human being, irrespective of whether he is educated or not,
powerful or not, physically capable or not, rich or not, must be able to achieve it.
Actually it must be practicable by one who has no education, no money, no physical
strength, no culture, nothing. You see, this is the truth my Master showed us in his own
person. And I am sure that what I felt you also would have felt, when you saw the
Master; that if he can do it, I can also do it. This was precisely the spirit and the
confidence that he had to give us, for which reason he had to adopt that particular way
of living, the form that he assumed for himself.
 So this was the most important thing, you see, that human beings will not undertake
anything, if they have no confidence that they will be able to do it successfully. And
that was the master stroke of the Master. Because if he had come as a tall man, rich,
powerful, influential, we would have said, "Yes, of course, he can do it, but what
about me?" So here we have that phenomenon of what we believe to be the highest,
assuming the form of the lowest to guide us to himself. I think that was his greatest act
of generosity that not only did he come to us as a human being, but he had to come in
such a form in which he had to suffer so much just to show us that, "With all my
weakness, with all my suffering, with all my poverty, I am what I am, and this you too
can become!"

The second lesson to us is: "If you are to be able to do the work as I am able to do
it, you, too, must be simple." And therefore he says, "Be simple and in tune with
nature." And therefore, in his physical and social life he showed us what the lowest
human level of existence is, and in his spiritual inner life he revealed to us what the
highest spiritual level can be, and this [pointing downwards] was meant to lead us to
that [pointing upwards]; to teach us that being this, you can become that. That is
precisely the universal applicability of Sahaj Marg.

The second beauty of his teaching is that there is nothing in the teaching which
needs any special capacity in us to practice it. If you have to do hatha yoga, there are
so many physical requirements; if it is jnana yoga, you need intellectual powers of an
extraordinary nature; if it is tapasya or askesis as you call it, then you need enormous
endurance of physical conditions, which normally human beings don't have. Many
systems in the past could only be for the men, the males; and almost all systems of the
past, and many today also, are only for the celibates. And most of them said, "Go
away to the jungle." Which means a tremendous renunciation and a courage that an
ordinary mortal is not supposed to have when he starts off this practice. Therefore this
very sad and unfortunate fact that although systems have been available from time
immemorial, few have been able to practice them, because they could not do it.

It was not that in the past people were not willing to evolve, it was just that people
were unable to undertake these rigorous systems, rigorous disciplines, and therefore
these systems failed. What is the use of having systems which we cannot practice?
Therefore I would make bold to say that humanity had to wait for Ram Chandra to
come to give us a system which all can practice without any difficulty. That means that
in the past we had the willingness to do it, but not the ability to do it. Today we have
the willingness and, fortunately, a system which requires no ability on our part. That is
why it is said in Sahaj Marg, and the Master has said it so many times, "What is the
qualification for you to commence abhyas? Only your willingness."
 That brings us to the most significant and important feature of Sahaj Marg, the role
of the guru. We need no capacities, no qualities, precisely because he has everything
that is needed to take us up to Himself. It is an important fact that even in the Vedic
literature the disciple is told to go and meditate, and he meditates for twenty years,
forty years, fifty years, and comes back to the guru. He comes back and reports to the
guru what he has discovered by his practice. The guru says, "Very good, meditate
twenty years more." And this goes on and on, which means that the guru does very
little by way of help and assistance to the disciple. All they did was to say, "Practice
it."

Those of you who wish to verify this statement have only to look at one of the
Upanishads, and you will find this is what happened. And one of the most famous
stories shows how tragic such a system of teaching can be. The story says how one of
the Indras, one of the cosmic functionaries, and a so-called, how do you call it,
demonic person, vritra, both went to a guru for instruction. The guru taught them that
the body is the ultimate thing, because in it is embodied the soul, in it lives the soul,
and by it the soul reaches its destination. So the body is the highest. The demonic
person was satisfied. He was a great king, he put on all his jewelry, looked into the
well, admired his own reflection and said, "Yes, the guru is right." His spirituality
stopped there. So, you see, the responsibility for practice and progress was on the
disciple, and not on the guru. In Sahaj Marg the responsibility for practice is ours, the
responsibility for progress belongs to the Master. I don't think that ever before has a
system of such a nature existed.

And the second factor is that in Sahaj Marg the Master never says, "Good." He
says, "Yes, go further. This is only the beginning of spirituality." Those of you who
have read Master's books, especially Towards Infinity, you will find that at every
point he says, "This is something which even the gods have not achieved, but yet it is
the beginning of spirituality! It is a condition which even the gods do not have, but it is
only the beginning of spirituality." And those of you who have read the latest
publication, Master's autobiography volume two, you will find confirmation of this in
almost every sentence of the book.

Now in the beginning, in 1964, 1965, when I started practice, I was quite
discouraged by this. I used to wonder what is spirituality which can take you to such
heights, and yet it is only the beginning. Where is the end? You see, it is one of the,
shall I say, limiting things of the human mind that everything must have a beginning and
an end. Now Sahaj Marg is contrary to this very ordinary human idea. It says: the
beginning is wherever you are, the end is where I am, and that is infinity! Therefore,
we have two interesting features: the book is called Towards Infinity and the second
one is that even Lalaji is still swimming in the ocean of bliss towards the Centre.

The third factor shows the tremendous generosity of Master's Master, that even as
he is swimming towards the Centre, he is transferring his spiritual achievement back
to the successor, our Babuji Maharaj. Now this generosity is not a very important
thing. Of course, masters are expected to be generous. Then what is the important
lesson that we learn from Lalaji's acquiring spiritual merit which he is transferring
back to his disciple? What is the important lesson that we learn? This is something
that we have to learn very, very thoroughly: that achievement is not related to the
acquisition of anything. Maybe it is for this reason, too, that Babuji came without any
powers, without any wealth, without any education, because these are also acquired
things.

So a man can begin this divine adventure owning nothing, possessing nothing,
acquiring nothing, and as he grows, or as he advances, he acquires things which he is
not allowed to keep, he has to transfer all back. The most important reason for this is
that any possession leads to egoism, arrogance, pride. And the second truth is they
become weights which we cannot take with us on our swimming. Then what is the
end? It is a merging in the centre which again has nothing — no powers, no qualities,
nothing, you see.

So, therefore, dear brothers and sisters, in Sahaj Marg we have a unique system
which any human being anywhere can practice. It needs nothing for it to be practiced
except willingness. It offers a practice which is very simple, very easy; and the
Master takes upon himself the responsibility of taking us to the goal. And this is made
possible by the fourth most important characteristic of Sahaj Marg — transmission.

Now we have heard a lot about transmission, that it is the use of the divine energy
for the transformation of man, and all sorts of funny things about it. But they have
never convinced me, or rather they have never touched my heart, because all of them
have a funny idea of conveying something from the Master to us, transfer of something
from the Master to us. That gives a slightly misleading picture of Sahaj Marg. Now
what is it that is really transmitted? And why?

Once when I was alone with Master, it was midnight on a very cold night in
Shahjahanpur. He was unusually moody and distressed about the progress of abhyasis,
and he casually said something, the significance of which I did not realize at that
moment. What he said was, "People say God is love, and it is true. But yet when God
comes to us, we are unwilling to receive his love." Later on I understood that this love
could be what transmission is. It is the love that God has for us that is transmitted, and
it is that love which makes us grow. And this also answered for me a very important
question, why there is no compulsory discipline in Sahaj Marg; because love cannot
demand or force; love must evoke. Therefore even the Ten Maxims tell us only what to
do and leave it to us to do it when we have developed sufficient love for the Master
and for our goal.

That is why in Sahaj Marg I believe we have a system which has a very human
guru, promising the divine goal in a very human way of achievement. And all these
three aspects our Master reflects in his existence. Though being divine himself, he is
in a human form, dealing with human beings in a very human way with human love and
raising us to himself.

Thank you.
 4
Vorauf, 3 July 1986
This morning I suddenly discovered that in the last three lectures about Master and his
role in human evolution I had not dealt with what we should do with our Master. My
Master has said that He [pointing upwards] is the real Master and all the human
masters are His representatives. So in the eternal form God is always available to us,
but because the human mind cannot appreciate the unlimited, infinite, formless being,
we are not able to utilise God directly. Once somebody asked my Master how far an
abhyasi praying to God directly can possibly progress. Master answered that with the
greatest difficulty one may progress up to the second point of the heart, the atma
region, the atma chakra. And according to my Master, under the strictest conditions of
tapasya — askesis — it took forty-five years. And the more interesting thing is that to
go from the second to the third point would take five times that, that is, about 2,250
years!

This reveals two interesting things: how difficult it is to proceed without a master,
that is number one; the more interesting feature is that if you consider the span of
human life, however long it may have been — even in so-called Atlantean times —
how far could any of the past masters have really advanced? This is something we
should all think about. It is not that we are going to disrespect the great ones of the
past, because they had everything that is necessary in a perfect abhyasi. They had
devotion, they had faith, and they had the immense courage to put their whole lives
behind their practice. But they lacked the one element that is essential, a master of
calibre! That is the most important thing, 'of calibre', because everybody calls himself
a master, but we seek a master of that calibre which can take you to the Ultimate. That
is the most important thing to consider.

All these things I am stating on the fact of Master's own observation about the great
ones of the past. Because when we asked Babuji, "Who is the most highly
developed?" He said Kabir. And he was supposed to be in the sixteenth ring in the
scheme of twenty three rings. And when we asked about the other great rishis of the
past he just smiled and kept quiet. So what I am trying to pinpoint is that our effort
alone is meaningless. Because when the greatest rishis of the past have put all their
lives into a dedicated practice of yoga, and they achieved nothing which could even
be mentioned today, what are we going to achieve? So the Master is not only the most
important element of our practice, perhaps he is the element of our practice. So when
we have a master we should know how to utilise him, otherwise his presence is of no
use to us.

On another occasion I described a master as a change agent. So his role is very

much like that of a catalyst in a chemical reaction. The reaction cannot possibly take
place without a catalyst, but the catalyst itself is unchanged. And here we have a really
magnificent conception of the Master as the catalyst. Because what are the two
elements of the reaction? One is the aspiring human individual, and the other element
is God in His ultimacy, and the two have to come together and form one compound.
And the catalyst is nothing but that same God in His ultimate form come down in
human form to help us to associate with Himself in His abstract form, so that He can
help us to merge with Himself. So God plays two roles: one as the God with whom
we have to merge and one as God, the Master, who helps us to merge with Himself.
So this is a recognition of the fact that merging with the Divine is impossible without a
master. And this truth is repeated again and again in the Sahaj Marg literature of the
Master. Very literally we can get on without God — we have been getting on for
millions of years without God. We have been doing it for all our lives. It might appear
to be almost a blasphemous statement, and people with a religious orientation will
certainly not accept it. But it is nevertheless a fact.

So even the Infinite Absolute, if we have to make some use of it, we need a master
to make us aware that He exists, and to put us in contact with Him. Therefore the
Hindu Shastras speak of the master as God. They say there is no God other than the
master. And these are of course many Vedic chants which praise the master as
Brahma, as Vishnu, as Shiva, as the Ultimate itself. And Babuji always used to say
that God is limited, the ultimate God is limited, because He cannot create another one
like Himself! But this was not a joke. Babuji used to laugh when he said this, but it
was not a joke. But when that same God descends in human form as a master, He can
create as many as He likes like Himself. So it is one of those surprising and un-
understandable facts, that the infinite God is limited, whereas the finite master is
unlimited. Reverting to the question of the prayer, this is another reason why you
should pray to the Master and not to God.

So now I am sure we realize the importance of making proper use of the Master
when He is present with us. As I said in the first talk about the Master, his teaching is
at three levels: the body of teaching embodied in his books, in his philosophy; the
practice that we have to do; and his living example which we must emulate and try to
bring about in ourselves, so that we become like him.

Now, at least to the intellectuals, the first one should be easy. I mean reading his
books, understanding his philosophy, this should be easy. But it would appear
sometimes that Master has rather mischievously, playfully, made His teaching so
simple that intellectuals find no attraction in it. So what happens is that these well-
educated people take up Reality at Dawn, just glance through a few pages, pick out
the few grammatical errors or things like that and pitch it away. That is not exactly a
joke, because most of the intellectuals waste their intellect on finding out errors. So,
the more the intelligence of the person, the less he appreciates Master's works. The
uneducated, unfortunately, cannot even read his books. So we have this very
unfortunate, but very strange fact that the body of teaching seems to serve nobody.

What of the practice? When we come to the practice of the system we find more or
less a similar situation. The so-called adepts find our system ridiculously simple.
They cannot understand how a few minutes of practice per day can possibly achieve
the results that the Master says are possible. Because especially when we compare the
tapasya of the past rishis and we talk of half an hour meditation in the morning, ten
minutes cleaning in the evening, a few minutes prayer meditation at night, it does
appear ridiculous. This problem is common to all human beings, because the
simplicity of the system defeats our ability to understand how it could be so effective.

And that is not the only problem. The second problem is the problem of the human
ego, that we want to do something to achieve something. And here these doesn't seem
to be much that we really do. That is why many people still continue to stick to hatha
yoga and things like that, you see. So the ego needs to be satisfied that I have done
something to achieve what I have done. You see, the human being is not really
interested in achieving something, he wants to feel that he has done a great deal to
achieve it.

There is a third important reason: that we don't charge any money for it. People,
especially in the West, don't want anything free. This is, of course, again related to the
ego, you see, that I have paid something to get something, and therefore it is mine. I
remember one boy who came to see Master in New York in 1972. We spoke together
for some two or three hours about the system and the practice, and he was most
impressed with Master and the method. After all our talk he took out fifty dollars and
gave it to the Master. Master just pushed it back towards him. The boy thought Master
had not understood. He said, "No, no, Ram Chandra, this is for you." Then Babuji
asked, "What for?" He said, "No, no, you have told me so much, taught me so much,
and you are going to give me realisation, so I want to give you something now." Babuji
calmly took the money and put it in his pocket, in the boy's pocket, and said, "We don't
sell spirituality." The boy was really confused, you see. He said, "But how can you
give us realisation for free?" So this is the attitude in the West, you see, that you must
pay for everything you get. And just a suggestion, I hope you won't take it amiss, or
take it in the wrong sense: this same attitude seems to pervade what is called the love
life here, a commercial attitude towards it. Anyway, that is a side remark.

What of the East? We have spoken of the West, what of the East? In the East we
take everything that is available which is free, but we never use it. It's a fact. You have
only to put up a notice "free," and whether they need it or not, people will go and take
it. So for the same reason both East and West don't benefit from it. So we see that the
teaching is useless to both the educated and the uneducated. The practice is not
appreciated by the East and the West, because it is free, and because the ego is the
same in both cases.

Now there remains the last, the life of the Master and the example that we have to
get from it. There, too, the same tragic set of circumstances prevail. The simple
people of the land see him as a simple person like themselves, and they cannot
appreciate his greatness. His simplicity seemed to bring them closer, but only at the
merely inquisitive level, the human level. And Babuji once told me a story to illustrate
this. It seems his own mother asked him, "You are closing your eyes and cheating all
the public who come to you." She asked him, "When did you ever see God, that you
can show them God?" And of course in the West the problem is similar. Unless a man
is sophisticated, well-dressed, good looking, able to impress with his speeches, he
has no chance. And again you see the human inability to see the good, but the well
developed ability to see the bad. This persists everywhere ... I mean, the human
inability to see the good in others. This you find as a general thing in all humans.

In all my years with the Master I don't think I ever saw one person who commented
upon Babuji's grace, grace in behaviour, grace in etiquette, grace in his way of
approach to other people. I didn't see even one person who appreciated his
gracefulness. I'm not talking of abhyasis, otherwise we wouldn't be here, you see. And
those who wanted to emulate the Master, especially in the East, they only started
growing beards and smoking the hookah. And once, when speaking to Mr. Andre
Poray, Babuji himself said, "My simplicity is my only deception." Because simplicity,
whether in a person or in a system, is very difficult to accept because our educational
systems make us appreciate only that which is complex.

So now what are we to do about how to utilise the Master? The first requirement is
as Babuji said, "Be simple and in tune with nature." Because only by becoming simple
will we accept and appreciate the value of simplicity. The second is to read and
reread his literature again and again, until we are able to make it impress our intellect
with its real value. It is my experience that as we develop, we find more meaning in
his books and, in that sense, they reflect our development. That is why we should
reread them at least once every year, so that the more we understand, we know the
more we have developed, too. And then, by Master's grace, a day will come when we
understand it totally, and we know we have become like the Master.

The second thing is the practice. We must do it, however difficult it is. Like any
practice, it is difficult in the beginning, but when you can practice it perfectly you
know you are a master now. It is important to recognize here that both the teaching and
the practice are only like ladders to help us to move up. And when we have come to
the top, the ladders are of no more use to us. Whenever Babuji said, "Books are
useless, knowledge is not of much use," he said it from the top. When we reach that
level, we will also find that they are not of much use to us.

The third and most important element is the Master Himself, his life, his example.
In a very real sense we can do without the other two, but we cannot do without this.
Every abhyasi can develop without the books, without the practice, provided he
comes to the Master, lives with the Master, behaves like the Master, lives like the
Master, and becomes like the Master. It is quite easy, too. That is why Babuji said,
"Closeness with the Master is the most important thing." So we must try to develop
this closeness. And, as we know very well, physical closeness is not always possible,
nor is it so meaningful. It is the inner closeness we have to develop. And to make this
possible we must give up all our prejudices, all our preconceptions of what a master
should be, how he should behave, what should be his education, what should be his
level of culture, all this we have to drop.

So we have to learn to accept the Master as He is and find the Master in Him; not
decide what a master should be and look for him somewhere else. So this is the most
important thing: that when we accept the Master, we accept him, we accept his
teaching, we accept his practice, everything becomes possible. Whereas if we accept
his teaching, we need not accept the practice, we need not accept the Master either.

Therefore, even among the thousands of abhyasis of our Mission, we find there are
many who accept his teaching, there are many who accept the practice, but most do not
seem to have accepted the Master Himself, because they have some reservation or
other somewhere in their minds. So what is the secret of success in utilizing the
Master for our absolute, total benefit? Total acceptance of the Master! And you will
find how easy and how natural this is when you see a baby born to its mother. It learns
the mother's language, learns to behave like the mother, learns everything from the
family, just because it accepts the mother from the day of its birth.

So dear sisters and brothers that is the secret — accept him, everything follows;
but accept only his teaching or only his practice, nothing follows.

Thank you very much.

 Marseilles, 8 July 1986
I thought maybe we should speak of some of the Master's important teachings,
fundamental teachings. In Vorauf in Germany we talked about, or considered, what
role the Master plays in evolution, and what is the abhyasi's role in his own evolution,
and what connects the abhyasi and his teacher. What we spoke about at that time were
three things: the teaching of the Master, the practice given to us by the Master, and the
love between the Master and the disciple. So perhaps we should give some
consideration to the teachings.

Now Master's teachings have been absolutely minimal, and that conforms to the
tradition in India that the important things are in capsule form, encapsulated. Because
one of the main, I don't know how to call it, considerations, thoughts, whatever you
like to call it, in India, is that teaching should not be complete in the sense that it is in
the West. And this follows the pattern of nature. Master used to say that in nature you
have a seed and the seed grows into a tree. Nature does not go and plant trees.
Similarly in the East we believe we should give every thought a seed-form. That is
why especially the philosophic and higher mystical thoughts in India are found in what
we call the sutra form. Like we have the famous Vedic texts, and out of them, you
know, there are four or five very important statements, like the one which says, "You
are That." Now imagine that we know what it means — you are That. The difficulty
comes when you want to know what "That" is; and therefore they say, "To find out
what That is, meditate."

So in the East, we don't believe in giving finished volumes of knowledge because,

like when you dig a well, for instance, there must be a spring which feeds the well
continuously, eternally. We don't dig a hole and fill it with water and then take out the
water from it. That is a filling and withdrawing process, but when you dig a well, it is
a creative process, because now you allow nature to feed you almost continuously,
eternally, let us say. So similarly we view the process of education as one in which
the seed is sown, and then it must grow in the student's heart or intellect, whatever you
think. Of course, even in the East, it remains largely an ideal, because when the
materialistic civilisation started taking hold there, the same thing that is happening
here started happening there, too.

But in the spiritual life, we are all still accustomed to this system that the Master
sows a seed. That is why, in Sahaj Marg especially, we find that the teaching is so
condensed, and we have so few books of the Master. I remember when I first joined
the Mission in 1964, we had only a few books, the Master's books, and they were all
very small, Reality at Dawn — eighty pages, Efficacy of Raja Yoga — eighty pages;
and on the first reading I was rather disappointed. I remember when I first read
Reality at Dawn, I almost threw it away, you see, as something useless, something
almost infantile. And that was the reaction of most people who read those books of the
Master. Because when we start, we don't know what we need from the Master, what
the Master should give us; but later I discovered that they are very profound, and each
time you read them you find new meanings. That is precisely the function of the
Master's teaching, that we should find more and more meaning from repeated readings,
reflecting the expansion of our ability to understand. So it is an index to our growth.

It is a remarkable thing that in one book the Master is able to put in all the
knowledge that we shall need from the beginning to the end, the same words
containing different levels of growth and spiritual existence. I asked Master once
when the abhyasis of the Mission will ever be able to write such books. He said, "It is
very simple. When they become masters they will also write such books." So that is
one of the truths of the Eastern wisdom that only masters can, and should, write books.
Now every book cannot claim to be a book. Just because it has a nice cover and one
hundred and fifty pages between the covers, it does not become a book. There must be
something which will enable us to grow and become what we should, between those
two covers. And Master once laughingly told me that the human system is like a book,
or should be like a book. We also have covers, some very beautiful, some attractive,
some white, some black, some tall, some short, in all sizes, and in between these
covers there is something very vital which should reveal what we are, progressively
as we grow, from the human level to the divine level. And I think you all know what it
is. What is it? The Heart, of course!

So it is the heart that is in some way the essence of human existence. In a book it is
the thought that is what is valuable, not the paper and the ink. So of the many teachings
of the Master, the first is, "Put value into anything that you do." Now yesterday when
we came to France, and we found things are very expensive, we were told that it is
because there is a V.A.T. It's the value in the value-added-tax. Now it is a very simple
thing in material, economical terms, to add value, because here we deal with the
externals, with the form, with the surface. But how to have a V.A. inside? It is not a
V.A.T. any more, there is no taxation here. It can be only by growth, not by accretion.
Like the crystal grows bigger and bigger by accretion from the surface by adding to
itself from outside, you see, it doesn't grow from inside. So that is the problem in
spiritual life, that we have to instill growth into the heart so that it can grow from
inside. The educational pattern should also be like that, because in the East we don't
believe ignorance is something like a mark on a piece of paper to be erased (which
we can erase with rubber) from outside. It is believed that if the Master sows the seed
of knowledge inside, sows the seed of wisdom inside, then, as it grows, the ignorance
is thrown out, very much like when a tree grows, the bark expands and falls off from
outside. So the Master always called his system, our Master, Babuji Maharaj, he said
his system was primarily a process of seeding. That is why his system was so brief,
and he also spoke so briefly. You will all remember that when he was asked a
question, his answer rarely exceeded one sentence. I used to be very confused,
especially in the first one or two years of my life with him. For any question I asked,
he had only one or two answers:

"Babuji, how is this to be changed?"

"Meditate."

"Babuji, how is that man to be changed?"

"Do the cleaning."

"Babuji, how is spiritual growth possible?"

"I am telling you it's very simple. Transmit."

And I had to be content with these brief answers, and sometimes when I had the
courage to ask him, "Babuji, but I am not able to understand what you are saying!", he
had the fourth inevitable answer — "Think over it."

So you see, his teaching was so simple. And the beauty of it was that he simplified
his own life. It's not a small thing, because you see how much trouble I am facing! I
have to talk to you for hours and hours, he had to only say a few words! He spoke only
for a few seconds sometimes. So we have to similarly start thinking in those terms:
less of speaking, more of communion, communication without speaking. So that is, that
was, and that should be, the essence of our system all along.

The genius of Babuji's teaching was that he was able to create in us a longing to
think for ourselves and to find the answers from within ourselves. Because not only
did we find the answers by this method, we also got the confidence, and subsequently
the conviction, that within us is everything that is within the Master too. I think that is
the beginning of faith, because when an abhyasi, when a disciple, first realizes that he
can find within himself everything that he needs, everything that he shall need, that is
the first step in faith. And why should this become faith in the Master, for instance?
Why not in our own selves? You see, that is again a vital difference in the system of
education. The Occidental system teaches us to have dependence on ourselves, faith in
ourselves, by making us learn for ourselves from books, from libraries, from videos,
and this makes the ego grow. "I have learned. I know." Things like that, you see.

But when the Master seeds us and says, "Look, I am putting the seed in you, so that
it shall grow," we know that though everything is within us, the seed was put there by
the Master, and therefore, first we become thankful to him, then we become grateful to
him, and then when the system works, and we find everything is in us because he put it
there, the faith comes. That through his help, by his grace, provided I am receptive,
everything is possible.

So this is the real connection between the abhyasi and the guru, you see. He seeds,
we provide the soil; and like any soil, it must be kept clean, free of insects, free of
weeds, we have also to co-operate in this cleaning of ourselves. Otherwise it
becomes like the grass, you see, a mixture of everything, weeds, nettles, grass. So that
also makes another feeling grow in us that we have to co-operate. So these are the
elements of his teaching. He seeds, we allow it to grow within us, and we find the
evidence for this growth in the very teaching that he provides for us. Because every
time we reread one of his books, we find our understanding is better, deeper, and then
comes the real spiritual feeling which Master always wanted, the feeling of wonder,
not curiosity, you see, but wonder! That these same eighty pages of Reality at Dawn,
for instance, which I threw away when I first read, can now show me so many things
inside itself. How is it possible? Because in nature, and in Sahaj Marg too, we say
change must reflect itself in a changed situation, in a changed form, content,
everything, you see.

We expect change when, for instance, we cook rice. We expect the rice to be hard
first and soft after it is cooked. And by this process of observing change outside of
ourselves, at some stage we seem to have lost the ability to see the change inside
ourselves. Now what the Master's books give us back is this ability to see the change
in ourselves, because every time we understand his book in a different way, we know
we have changed. So, as I am used to saying it, his books are like mirrors. They don't
change, but they show the change in ourselves, very much like the mirror. We change,
and the mirror shows how we have changed. Now suppose every time my face
changes, the mirror also changes. How would I ever know which is changing, and
what is changing, and in what way? So the Master provides for us, in his teaching, two
things — two birds with one stone. It is a system of teaching which enables us to read,
understand and practice what he tells us to do. And at the same time it also reveals to
us the changes that are taking place in us.
 So that is the beauty of his teaching, very simple, because even ordinarily educated
children can understand it. No volumes to be read, no libraries to be gone through; at
the same time profoundest in its meaning, at the same time graded in such a way that
within itself it contains all the steps that we shall need. It is almost like a ladder which
has only three steps, but every time we put our foot up, there is another step to receive
us; and at the same time a mirror to show our growth, so that it is a permanent index to
reveal to us at what stage we are. And most important, with sufficient things yet in it to
beckon us on, "Yes, there is still more in me to understand, go ahead." Not like a novel
which you read and throw away, you see . . . because when, even after twenty-five
years of practice, you find new meaning in the book, one cannot but avoid thinking that
there will be more and more meaning in it as we further advance. So it is a many
pronged venture in education.

So we see how many things His teaching achieves. But it is important to remember,
as Babuji said in Munich, I think, or in Paris, that we should read his books again and
again. Otherwise, our understanding remains at the original level. By original I mean
when we first started practice. And also it can function as an instrument of revelation
of our condition.

So that was the beauty, that is the beauty, of my Master's teaching. And it is
essential that we understand that the beauty is in its simplicity. Because like a seed can
grow, his seed-teachings, being in seed-form, permit growth and that is the attraction
of this path. Because however much we may desire the journey to be completed, the
moment the journey is completed there is a feeling of disappointment, and all effort
stops. There is a rather, what should I say, unnecessary feeling of completion, as if
everything has been achieved, and nothing is left to achieve. And this you can see
reflected in many books, in so-called philosophy in the West, sometimes even in
science, that everything that has to be said has been said. See, it is not only a misuse of
knowledge to think that everything that can possibly be said has been said, or science
has no further discoveries to make, but it is a denial of the infinity of existence, of
knowledge. And this same arrogance exists in the human being who thinks he or she
has grown to the highest possible limit, and no further growth can be possible. And
this is not like the ordinary arrogance - that I can do this, or I can read that. That is not
so destructive. But the arrogant who thinks he or she has grown to the highest level is
self-destructive, because it makes us stop all effort and sit back in our easy chairs.

This is one of the most important aspects of the Master's teaching, because Babuji
always said, "There is yet more to achieve, there is yet more to be done." Sometimes
it was surprising, very often it was annoying. I used to be quite angry sometimes, too,
because on one side he used to praise my spiritual growth, for instance, making me
feel very happy, sometimes very proud, and the next moment he would throw cold
water on me by saying, "Yes, but you know, by Lalaji's grace it is all there, but it's
only the beginning." Now it was a good thing because that disappointment, that anger,
provided the motive force necessary for the next stage of advancement. If at any time
he had said, "Yes, you have reached the end," my abhyas would have stopped.

So that is the beauty of the teaching, you see, that the teaching itself is not so
important as the evolutionary urge it creates in us. Because we believe that one of the
reasons for our not growing is that this evolutionary urge has ceased to exist, or is
lying dormant in us. And when a Master is able to sort of tap it and make it wake up,
then it starts moving inside us. And generally it cannot be stopped after that, and that is
a blessing, because, otherwise, we are foolish enough to stop it, too.

So what is it that the Master does which is most important for us? It is to awaken in
us this urge to develop and become as perfect as we can become. Our evolutionary
urge is awakened to make us want to grow and develop to the highest possible extent,
the most perfect extent.

I used to find, during my life with my Master, in Shahjahanpur and elsewhere with
him, a very peculiar thing — that generally good abhyasis were apparently neglected
by him. When I say good abhyasis, I mean those who have been dedicated to him and
who were following the practice with sincerity and regularity. He rarely gave them
any personal attention, just a glance sometimes, or maybe a smile, which was very
valuable. But over those who were resisting him, who were running away from him,
trying to run away from him, he would exercise all his possible charms, which were
many! And sometimes I used to be upset by this because in our conventional civilized
life, as we call it, we are educated into this idea that praise and reward must be to
those who deserve it; but he would seem to be following the opposite way, you see.
The deserving didn't get anything, and the undeserving were able to entice him
towards themselves, make him worry about them, make him take problems and
troubles about them and, as I said, it used to make me very upset.

Because it was like the story in the Bible, of the return of the prodigal son. There
was one son at home looking after his father, very devoted, very loving, and they were
there. The other fellow who ran away and comes back twenty years later — a useless
fellow, a drunkard, a runaway — for him, as the Bible says, they killed the fatted calf,
they made a coat for him, they spread the red carpet in front of him. So once I asked
Babuji, "What is the justice in this? That the devoted son who has been serving the
father for twenty years gets very little attention from the father, while this other fellow,
who ran away and comes back after twenty years, is getting V.I.P. treatment, as we
say?" Master said, "Think over it." — the fourth answer, as I said! And that made me
even more angry, because I thought he was trying to evade an answer. Something
which cannot be answered, we try to avoid it. And I was foolish enough to think that
Master was avoiding giving an answer because he had no answer for it.

But every time I suspected the Master of such a thing, I discovered I was a fool,
because one day I discovered, sitting in my bed, transmitting to some centres and
abhyasis, that I was thinking of an abhyasi who had not come to meditate with me for
eight months. Suddenly this knowledge came to me, "I am doing the same thing that I
am accusing Babuji of doing." Why should I think of an absent abhyasi who has not
bothered to come for eight months, who doesn't care about Sahaj Marg? Then when I
started thinking over it, I find it's what every mother does! Suppose you have five
children and four are at home, you are thinking of the fifth one who is not there; or a
shepherd who goes with fifty sheep, and who has brought back forty-nine. He is not
happy with the forty-nine he has, he is miserable over the fiftieth which is missing.

Then this profound thought came to me, you see, the Master is both the mother and
the shepherd. Now I want to emphasize this, both a mother and a shepherd, because in
certain traditions we talk of the master as a mother, and in one religion he is called
'The Shepherd'. I haven't come across any system which unites the two in one. That
night, sitting in my bed, I discovered a divine shepherd who is a mother. And therefore
the Master was always concerned about those who are not there, and this was another
teaching for us, "Don't be happy with those you have, be concerned with those who are
not with you." And it was not just an expression of concern as such, but it was again a
seed-conception, a seed-thought, that if you are thinking of a universal brotherhood
where all humanity shall be brothers and sisters, the abhyasis alone have no meaning.
We have to concern ourselves with all human beings everywhere. You see, what a
grand conception, what enormous love and compassion! A mother looks after only her
own children, a shepherd looks after only his own sheep, and the proof is in all
religions, that they only look to their own aspirants, their own members. For example
Christianity says, "Become a Christian, then Christ will look after you."

Here was a Master with a very little system, an almost non-existent system, but
who had the tremendous courage, the enormous love, the enormous compassion to
include all humanity in his thought and put them in his heart. And this he has said in
one of his books, "I have a heart which is the playing field of all humanity." Once I
remember he was quite preoccupied and, after a few minutes, he told me that Lalaji
had instructed him to raise a saint in another country, who was about to die, to a higher
point. I was very surprised. I said, "Babuji, how are you concerned with a saint in that
country? He is not an abhyasi." Babuji was surprised. He said, "Do you think I am
here only for the abhyasis?" And then he said something which made my ego almost
burst, you know, like a bubble. He said, "My work with the abhyasis is probably a
very tiny fraction of my total work." It was a very revealing experience and also very
humbling. I believe we all need this humbling, because very often we imagine that just
by being abhyasis, we are something great. We must remember that being abhyasis, we
can become something great, by His grace.

So you see, that was another teaching, that the Mission, as such, is probably like a
seed itself, like each heart is a field for his seed to be sown in. Many hearts combined
together like that form a group like ours now here; it's a small garden of the Master, a
garden of hearts, which he has seeded and made them grow. But like in science, or in
agriculture, we want even deserts to bloom; so also the Master's work goes on and on,
extending both laterally and vertically. Now that's a very difficult idea to grasp,
because we, in our physical world, we are able to make things grow vertically or
make things grow horizontally. What is the combination of these two movements? We
call it expansion from within, like when a child blows a balloon, it expands. You don't
say, "A balloon grows," you say "A balloon expands." So the Master's work with
individuals is but the beginning of the Master's work with humanity as such.

Now I thought that was the end of it all. But one day he told me that he is
transmitting to some souls on Venus. You see, I could understand that story about the
saint, because, after all, he was a human being, but a soul on Venus, not even a human
being, who knows what it is? So I said, "Babuji, Venus? You mean Venus?" He said,
"Yes, I am telling you, when I studied geography, I learned about Venus also." That
was his answer. He was not arrogant, so as to say, "Yes, what did you think of my
work?" He only said, "When I studied geography, I learned a little about Venus too."
So then I asked him, "What were you doing on Venus? He said, "You are a preceptor,
you should know!" I said, "Babuji, I only know about abhyasis." He said, "This is the
difficulty that preceptors don't have the faith in the Master to work as they should." I
said, "Why should I know about it, because you are supposed to teach me." He said,
"Yes, but I taught you everything on the first day."

I was almost inclined to quarrel with him, but I remembered that he is, after all, the
Master, you see, and I have to be respectful. So I said, "Babuji, but can you not tell me
now what you were doing?" So, he put on one of his famous smiles and gave me the
answer, he said, "I was doing the same thing I am doing all the time." That made me no
wiser and made me understand nothing more than I had understood a little earlier. So I
said, "Babuji, what was that?" He said, "Transmitting!", as if it was such an easy
thing, I should have known it long ago. Then I said, "Babuji, transmitting again?" He
said, "Well, I am telling you, there are only two things we have to do: clean and
transmit."

So that was interstellar work, cosmic work, whatever you like to call it. So this
gave me a further expansion in my concept, in my mental concept that our work in
spirituality expands beyond the human beings to other worlds, whatever they may be.
So, his compassion embraced not only human beings, but also other beings on other
worlds.

Then one day I discovered a third thing. Some Europeans, I think the first
Europeans in 1971, they were with him and, in the beginning, they were very
inquisitive. He was telling one of them how he had transmitted to his dog and
liberated it. He said he wanted to experiment whether it was possible, and he did
transmission, he liberated it. This showed that it is not only with the human and the
super-human levels that he works, but also with the sub-human level that he works.
Animals are not excluded from this compassion. If he chooses he can work with them,
too.

So on one side it expanded my knowledge of the fields of his work that they extend
through all existence without differentiating between animal life, human life, angels,
gods, what have you. It served a second very important purpose, that we, as human
beings, have no particular reasons to be proud or arrogant about being human beings,
because, in the Master's vision, we are all one. We are only lesser angels or better
animals! So a human being can be considered to be both; if the human being is very
bad with a lot of negative tendencies, destructive, we say he is nothing better than an
animal; and if the human being is so nice, so wonderful, so loving, so kind, so
generous, we say he is an angel! Now he is neither, he is a human being, you see. But
one shows to what depths we can sink, the other shows to what heights we can rise.

And the Master in his work showed me that he can do both — raise an animal at
one stroke to the level of a liberated being without passing through all the intermediate
stages through which we are struggling. He then added something which was a very
important lesson, too. He said, "You know, I did not have Lalaji's permission to
transmit to the dog. I wanted to experiment myself, and therefore I was punished. I had
to bear the samskaras of the dog." So, you see, it also at one stroke shows that a
master, while being a master, has yet to be obedient to his master. So that is the
discipline that the Master has to exercise over his own work. Now what was the
importance of this knowledge? That just because he has love and compassion, it does
not permit interference without his Master's permission.

You see, this is a very important idea to understand for the people of the West, the
Occident, because here we are guided in a different way by what we think to be our
love and compassion, which makes us believe that we have a right to interfere in other
people's lives, even if they are animals, birds, and very often it makes us waste our
time and efforts on things which we should not be doing. It is very difficult to
understand, because then we are inclined to ask, "What is the meaning of sympathy if I
cannot help?" But then, you know, comes the important concept that in nature there are
two elements: the fullest and most complete possibility of evolving to the Highest,
combined with what Master used to call 'deservingness'. While we can give
everything that he can give, a check has to be exercised to make sure that the person is
deserving. This teaching Master put in two or three words, "Be deserving, and then
desire."

So that was the highest expression of the Master's willingness to set us free, that
even evolution cannot be forced on something. So while he had the liberty to accept us
who came to him and to seed us with Himself, which is what he did every time he
transmitted, yet there could be no compulsion. That is why Babuji said that he never
gave direct advice or direct instruction. How charitable that was you can understand,
when he said that he never gave instructions, because if they were disobeyed, it would
add the sin of disobedience of the Master to our existing sins.

So that shows the Master had to do his work under enormous limitations. We had to
come to him willingly; we had to co-operate with him, which only means that we have
to work with him willingly, and even the stages of progress that we achieve, we must
achieve willingly, not be compelled by him to achieve. So he gave us the greatest
freedom to allow us to achieve the greatest possible freedom. And what was that? The
ability to surrender which alone would give us what he promised as the highest
"freedom from freedom."

It took me a very long time to understand this "freedom from freedom." I could
finally understand it only when I understood the idea of surrender, that what it really
is, is the freedom from the stupid freedom what we think we are now having, because
if all of you would examine the degree of freedom that you enjoy, you will understand
it's not worth having.

So what are we really surrendering to the Master? All that we surrender is this
very stupid, very limited freedom that we have, reflected in nothing but our ability to
do wrong things, to suffer, so that we can enjoy a real freedom, because now we are,
in a sense, looked after by the Master! So that was one of the highest levels of his
teaching — be free from these ideas of freedom, and surrender because in that lies
your highest benefit.
 So these are some of the elements of his teaching, which it would be very
profitable to dwell upon. In our future sessions, I shall try to think of other things to
expand, to explain these things.

Thank you.
 Marseilles, 9 July 1986
I have related some experiences yesterday which revealed to me the extent of my
Master's work and the scope of it. They revealed to me very clearly that he was
working on the sub-human, human and superhuman levels; and today I shall relate
some experiences that showed to me that his work was not limited by space and time,
too.

In the Indian tradition we recognize there are three types of gurus. One is supposed
to be like the hen, the other like the fish, and the third like the tortoise. The hen type
needs physical contact for its initiations, for whatever the guru can convey to the
disciple. So, on the scale of gurus, they are at the lowest level. The second level, that
is the fish, needs visual contact. That is, at least they should live together in one
ashram, things like that. Because the hen needs to sit on its egg to hatch out the
chicken, and the fish is supposed, in our tradition, to lay the egg in the water and then
swim around it, keeping eye contact only. The highest type is supposed to be like the
tortoise. The tortoise is supposed to lay its eggs on the sands of the river bank, cover
them over with sand, and go away into the water and keep mental contact. So in the
case of such gurus who are supposed to be the highest, neither physical contact nor
visual contact is necessary. So this was revealed to me by my Master.

The very first time I met him I was surprised that there was no touching, or laying
on of hands, as is traditionally done. You know under most systems, the guru lays his
hands on the disciple's head, or something like that. He only asked me to sit, and we
were quite far, about three meters from each other. And I did not, I could not,
understand how this could be possible. Then he explained to me that in the Sahaj Marg
system, no contact at all is necessary.

Now in India we have some very old abhyasis who started very early, that is in the
fifties, 1955/56 those years, you see. And it is worth reciting those stories, so that you
will get some idea of what I mean.

In 1955 Dr. Varadachari received a copy of Reality at Dawn to be reviewed for the
press. He was the official reviewer for the newspaper called The Hindu of Madras.
His review was published and three people read it in that paper. Two of them wrote to
the Master and asked him how they could start the meditation. One went to
Shahjahanpur and was formally introduced by Babuji. The other man did not go to
Shahjahanpur, because he received a reply from Master, telling him that he should
inform Babuji as to when he wanted to sit and at what time. And then Babuji would
transmit to him at that time. This man thought, "If he is such a great master as the book
claims to be, why should I have to write to him and give him the date and time?" So,
he decided to sit on a day and time of his own choice, and being a very orthodox
brahmin from South India, he consulted the almanac, and fixed a date and time. On
that particular day, at that particular time, he sat in meditation. He himself related this
story to me, that when he sat in meditation, he felt as if some molten steel was being
poured into his heart. What amazed him was that without being informed, yet the
Master was able to do the transmission at the time when he sat, almost three thousand
five hundred kilometres away from Babuji.

On one occasion, I asked Babuji how he did this. He said, "It is child's play. I just
made a thought that on the day and time when he sits, my transmission should flow to
him." That was all, you see. So these two persons were one of the first persons in
South India to join the Mission. And one of them had this unique experience. So
Master could not only work over long distances, knowing when and where we are
sitting, He could also transmit in such a way that it would reach at any time we sat.

Now, this is a very important thing in Sahaj Marg, you see, because it is as if ... you
know we have these modern conveniences — you can lie down in bed and then switch
off the lights. To the people of today's generation this may not appear very surprising
or modern. But all of us who are here above fifty years old will remember a time
when we had to switch off the light and then wander into bed, stumbling against things
in the darkness. In a sense the illumination was available only for a specified time.
And subsequent to switching off we had to blunder about in the darkness.

I would suggest that this is what happened in the past in spirituality also. Because
for one thing we had to be in physical contact, and the Master's power, such as it was,
could work only when the physical contact was maintained. Or with the higher type
we had to be at least where he could see us. And if we went out of his sight, it was out
of mind, as the old saying goes, you see — 'out of sight, out of mind'. It doesn't mean
out of mind in the sense of mental illness, it means you go out of his mind, out of his
thoughts. Here, our Master could do without our being in his presence, without
touching us, wherever we should be. But even that was not so wonderful. The superb
feature was, and is, that it was as if he gave us the control-switch in our hands. (He
gave the control switch into our hands, each one of us). So that whenever any one of us
sat anywhere in the world, we received the transmission. That is the most remarkable
feature of Sahaj Marg. And the second instance, which I told you, of the man in South
India who sat without informing Master, it revealed precisely this very important fact.

In the years before 1945, when Babuji started his work, this feature was unknown.
It could not even be imagined that such a thing could exist. Even till 1955/56 I think
few people would have experienced this sort of experience. Because for one thing, as
we all know from Lalaji's book, and from some of his letters to Master, and from
Master's autobiography, Lalaji had not many disciples. I don't think there could have
been more than a hundred or so, you see. And they were all in a small district —
Farrukhabad district — where Lalaji himself lived in Fatehgarh. This is my
assumption, perhaps there were two hundred or three hundred, I don't know, but still it
was a very small number and restricted to a very small geographical area in Uttar
Pradesh.

Then after Lalaji Maharaj passed away, till Babuji declared Himself as the
Representative in 1945, there was a gap of something like thirteen years. And going by
what Babuji has written, and by studying the declaration that was read out in
Fatehgarh, when he announced himself, or proclaimed himself to be Lalaji's spiritual
representative, it would appear that these was no spiritual work of any sort going on at
that time, except that the few abhyasis that Lalaji left behind continued their own
practice. And, as Babuji himself told me; these were very few preceptors in Lalaji's
times, perhaps not even a dozen.

And a very significant fact is that Babuji himself was not a preceptor during
Lalaji's lifetime. He was never a preceptor. But nevertheless, after he started work in
1945, under Lalaji's orders, he started transmitting to the South of India, because those
were Lalaji's instructions. "Start your work from the South." And of course he had to
travel once physically, and that brings me to how he prepared the field, as he called it.
He told me that when he arrived in Madras, he put his luggage in the cloakroom, and
took a horsedrawn coach and went round Madras. He had no friends, no contacts,
nothing. He did not know any language. All that he did was to take a horse coach and
go around once, come back to the station in the evening, and take the train to the next
city. Like this he finished Madras, Madurai, Trivandrum and some other cities in the
South. So I asked Him, "What exactly did you do'?" He said, "Well, I only prayed to
my Master, and transmitted to the atmosphere in those places, making the thought that
the transmission would reach people who are fit to receive it, and that they should
come to me for assistance, spiritual guidance." So this was the way he prepared the
field.

I remember that he started his work, maybe in 1945, like this in the South, and it
took eleven or twelve years for the first disciples to come from the South. So I asked
Babuji once, "If I till a field and sow some seeds of rice or wheat, you can get a crop
out in a few months. Why did it take you twelve years and fifteen years for your work
to start?" He said, "It is the resistance in human nature that makes this work difficult."
All other things in nature have a specified time. But human beings have no time, in the
sense that each one develops according to his own willingness, his craziness, his
intelligence, in whichever way it operates. So the first visit to the South, Master went
physically, then it appears he did not go out anywhere for a few years. So when I
asked him, "Why didn't you go again and again?", he said, "Well, you know, that
experience taught me how to do it sitting here in Shahjahanpur." So I asked him how
he did it. All he did was to take a map, look at a particular state of India, hold it in his
mind and transmit.

I want to tell you an experience in this connection which I personally had. It was on
my first visit to Europe with Babuji Maharaj in 1972. We were traveling from one
place to another by air. He just looked at me and said, "Prepare such and such a
country where we are going now." I asked Him, "How to do it?" He said, "Oh, you
have forgotten already. I have told you before." So I had to just, you know, think; but I
couldn't find the answer. So I said, "Babuji, I'm sorry, I can't remember it." He looked
at me and said, "Parthasarathi, you must always remember what I say, because I
myself forget sometimes what I have said."

You see, that was another way of his teaching, that he was never critical. He was
always prepared to take the blame upon himself, in a very humorous way, for our
failings. Then he told me how to do it. I started the work. After half an hour, he looked
at me and said, "You know, your work is not reaching this particular part of the
country." For a moment I was irritated, because I thought, you know, in the rational
way, "I am doing the work, what does he know about it?" But when I examined it, I
found he was correct. It seemed as if the rest of the country was green, this part was
still yellow or something.

Then I completed the work and asked him, "Babuji, when you can do this work
yourself in two or three minutes, and you can see what I am doing better than I can see
it myself, why don't you do it yourself? Why did you give me this work?" He said,
"There are very simple reasons for it. One thing is, I want to teach you how to do it.
And you see how well you have learnt it. The second thing is, if you do the lower
work, I am free to do the higher work."

So you see what he had to undertake, with great difficulties, to learn himself, he
could teach us so easily. Within half an hour, I could pick up the work he had taken
probably many years to learn from Lalaji. And not only was it now something I heard
about, spoke about, that he could transcend time and space, he gave me the personal
experience that I could also do it. So that was a very revealing experience to me, and
of course, a wonderful experience that Master had so much confidence in me to permit
me even to do such a small piece of work for him.

But an even more revealing experience was to follow at the end of that tour in
1972. We were going back home after finishing with Italy, and I think we were flying
from Rome to Beirut, and on the way he was very absorbed. And he was like that for
about two hours. When he relaxed and, you know, did like this [putting his hands
behind his head] as he always used to do, I asked him, "Why were you so absorbed?
What were you doing?" First he teased me, as he always used to say, "Oh, why should
I tell you everything that I do?" I said, "Well, it is your business, but if you want to tell
me, I am willing to hear." Then he asked me, "How much will you give me, if I tell
you what I did?" I said, "You once told me that your work is priceless. What can I give
you that will pay for it?" So after a few minutes of joking like this he looked at me
very gravely and said, "You know, I had some spare time on my hands, and I should
not remain idle. So I thought I should do some work." Then he suddenly looked at me
and said, "You are a preceptor. You examine and tell me what I was doing."

Now you see, he had finished the work, and how am I to examine something he has
already finished? You see, it's like somebody baking a cake and putting it on the dining
table, and when you ask her how she baked it, she says, "Watch me doing it and tell
me." How can you watch something in the past? So I was a bit confused. I said,
"Babuji, your work is over. How can I watch it now?" He said, "It's very easy. Just
think over it; how I did it." So I just meditated for a few minutes, and suddenly the
idea came that he was working in the future.

So I told him, "Babuji, I think you were working in the future." He was so pleased
to hear this answer, I don't know why. And he congratulated me. I said, "Babuji, it is
nothing. What have I said that's so wonderful?" He said, "Few persons can understand
whether I am working in the past or the present or the future. I am happy that, by
Lalaji's grace, you have been able to do it." He said, "Now, tell me, how much in the
future?" So I saw that I had got myself into big trouble, you see. Anyway, the Master
cannot be disobeyed, so I sat in meditation again, and it appeared to me that he was
working very far in the future, maybe a hundred thousand years, or something like that.
I told him, "Babuji, it seems quite far in the future, maybe fifty thousand years, maybe
one lakh years." We say, one lakh, for 100,000 in India. He just hugged me like that,
and said, "Wonderful work you are doing today."

Then he put on one of his mischievous smiles, and asked me, "Shall I tell you what
I was really doing?" I said, "Of course, I am waiting to hear it." He said, "You know, I
was idle as I told you, and the thought came to me that when the time for mahapralaya
comes, a Personality will have to come to do the dissolution of the Universe. Now that
is not very difficult work, but I thought the poor fellow may have some problems. So I
laid the foundation for his work." Now imagine, according to our tradition in India,
this present age, which we call the Kali Yuga, is supposed to last something like 43.2
million years; and tradition says only five thousand years of that has gone. So all the
43 million years are still to go. And here was my Master laying the foundation for that
work at that time.

So can you imagine what his work was? So when we say that it had no limitations
of space and time, it was a literal fact. Not only could he transmit anywhere into the
universe physically, but he could transmit into any time, past, present or future. Once
he told me, "I can transmit to the other end of the universe if I choose." Now I was
used to the conventional idea, you see, that light is the fastest thing. And even light
takes nine minutes to reach the sun, or from the sun to us. And science tells us that the
nearest star, the light from that star, takes four and a half years to come to us. So I
asked Babuji, "I don't doubt that you can transmit to the other end of the universe, but
when will it reach there?" He said, "What is this question you are asking? I don't
understand it."

So very patiently, I explained to him the fundamental facts of science that a letter
takes two days to reach from Madras to Shahjahanpur, starting from that, you know, to
Einstein's limitation of the velocity of light as a permanent limit. So he looked at me,
put on his glasses, and said, "Is that so?" I said, "Yes, that is what science says, you
see, and therefore, I asked you when your transmission would reach the other end of
the universe." Then he told me, "You know, science is not the only thing in this world.
And only a foolish person should depend on science."

I was quite shocked, because, you know, I am also a bit Westernized, and my faith
in science was almost a religion for me. I said, "Babuji, how can you say that?" He
said, "I can say it, because it is true." Very simple. You see, he needed no authority
like we need, that Einstein said this or Ptolemy said this. He did not have to say
anything. He said, "It is true, therefore I can say it." Then I said, "Okay, but how can it
possibly reach?" Then he told me, "It is the power of thought. You can be wherever
you want to be in the very instant that you think of it."

Then he asked me one question, "When I transmit to you from here to Madras, how
long does it take?" I said, "I've never thought of it." And really it is so, because having
been used to this idea of the velocity of light, and really speaking, it cannot take much
time, a fraction of a second, I said, "So I never thought of it in that way, you see, that it
can take some time." Then he said, "Look here, that was the truth."I said, "What was
the truth?" He said, "Your mind told you not to think about it, so why do you think
about it now?" And that was one of his great teachings, you see, that we should not
think about things which we should not think about. Because most of our problems
come from unnecessary thinking about all sorts of funny things in this world. What he
really meant was: stick to your business, don't worry about other things.

So you see, these three or four examples I gave you were very revealing, that here
was my Master with such fantastic abilities. I am deliberately not using the word
'power'. It was a capacity, which he inherited from his Master, that sitting in a tiny
place in India, an unknown place, he could attempt the extraordinary work, by his
transmission, of changing the universe even. So that was the extent and the scope of my
Master's work. And the brilliance of this work was not that he alone could do it, he
has made so many of us who can do it, too. And even the preceptors don't have much
limitation on their work. And such limitations as exist, are put by him.

So these are the things which I would like you all to understand about Master's
work, because it is important to preserve all these stories, and this knowledge, as a
tradition which we have to pass on into the future. Because even though people will
always be there to do this work, yet the tradition becomes part of the work. And these
are so beautiful and so human ways of teaching us, and at the same time so simple, that
he could teach us not through text books, or any ritualistic training, or teaching, but by
giving instruction in a few words, and making us do it ourselves. And then I could
really accept what he always used to say, "It is so simple." So only one who does the
work can see whether it is difficult or not. And whenever preceptors felt any problem
in their work, he always used to say, "Do it and find out!" And that was his most
important teaching — that work teaches. All the other teaching is useless and
irrelevant.

Thank you.
 Marseilles, 11 July 1986
I would like to relate a small experience I had as a school boy. When I used to travel
in the train, it was a common experience that children were impatient when the train
stopped at a station. And some of the children would try to push the train by pushing at
the wall of the compartment from inside. Of course, they couldn't do anything. We all
know that from inside something, we cannot push it ourselves. Now, why am I relating
this? Because, from the things we have spoken about the Master earlier, we have seen
that he does things to the universe from within its own environment. Now that is
something which normally we should not be able to do.

When we examine this question, we find that there are two ways in which we act.
Physical movement needs force applied from outside on the object to be moved. But
forces of life, of growth, of evolution, come from within. That is why you cannot make
a seed grow from outside. It has to grow from inside itself, so also a chicken from an
egg. We are familiar with this sort of natural growth of things. That is one reason why,
in Sahaj Marg, my Master never recommended the use of any external application of
practices, efforts. And many of the things not recommended we know, such as
ritualistic religious practices, and even yogic practices like hatha yoga, for instance.
Because his teaching came out of a profound understanding of the principles of life
that true well being, true growth, true evolution must come, and can come, only from
inside. And that was how he worked.

Therefore it was necessary for him to put himself inside our hearts, and this he
achieved in the most remarkable way which no surgeon can possibly attempt. It is one
of the well known ideas of people — about the movement of the fourth dimension, for
instance — that you cannot introduce anything into a closed object without opening it.
So normally we should have our hearts cut open and the seed put into it; but he is able
to do it from a different dimension altogether. And therefore this miraculous ability
that he had to introduce himself into our hearts without breaking our hearts. I mean this
literally. Because normally, in the human level of association, of intercourse, there
seems to be a great deal of breaking of hearts where love is involved. But his was the
only love that I have known which never broke a heart, both literally, and in other
ways, figuratively, romantically, allegorically, in all ways.

This leads me to conclude that the only real way of love, which can be love
without breaking another heart, is the spiritual love. The only real love which can act
without breaking another heart is the spiritual love. So as long as we remain mere
human beings, and we act at the merely human level of love, we are more or less
destined to fail. And another conclusion, one more conclusion, is that if we have to act
in ways initiative of our evolution and in ways which can contribute to our evolution,
our own practices must also be internalized. That is, they must be from within
ourselves. External aids may suffice for the nonce, for the time being, you see, but they
cannot help us all along.

You know, it is like a man who has fallen, you can help him by holding his hand.
But one who loses the capacity to walk, you cannot by any means help him. It applies
to all other helps, all other forms of help. One individual can help another individual,
in any field of activity, only if there is some remnant of that activity still present in the
person who needs the help. One who has lost the ability to think, you cannot do
anything with him. Incidentally, this is one reason why Master did not permit our
working with mentally unsound persons. Because though the mind is there, though the
brain is there, the power to think has gone. And they cannot be helped. So it is
necessary to rectify the process of thought itself from within, before you can help from
outside.

Therefore, I would suggest that what Master does for us in any field is to carry out
this process of rectification from within ourselves, from within us, the recipients, and
then strengthening the forces of life, so that we are able to reach a level from where
we can then operate for ourselves. So correction, normalization, and then independent
movement, these would appear to be three stages in our activity. And he does this, all
this, from inside.

Now, these are things difficult to understand, because in our world we are used to
rectifying things from outside. If it is a mechanical thing — take a screw driver, open
up the thing, correct it, and close it up again. Even the human body is handled in that
way, unfortunately. Today anything can be cut open, and stuffed with something else,
and closed up again — sewn up, as they call it in surgical terms! In fact in some
societies, in slang, when some job is completed, and when the man reports to his boss,
he says, "I've got it all sewn up, boss."

This shows the grossest physical approach to things. And it also shows the highest
human arrogance, that we can handle anything from outside, and correct it. And when
we fail, we are miserable. But unfortunately we seem to lack the basic understanding
that what we cannot do from the outside we should try from within. And I would like
to extend this line of reasoning to education itself, because education, if it is
understood as a mere stuffing of facts from outside into the poor head of a poor
recipient may, at best, achieve something like a computer memory. At best! Often it
achieves nothing more than remembrance of a few facts which we are unable to
connect together for our understanding, and which we are therefore unable to use when
we need them.

We have a saying in the Tamil language that when you see a dog, you don't have a
stone to chase it away with, and when you have a stone, there is no dog. So this is the
situation that faces most of us. And this is not a small matter. When I am hungry, I have
no food. People who are surrounded by food are too sick to eat. People who want to
work have no work. Where there is a lot of work, there is nobody to do it. And, most
tragically, we have love in the heart but nobody to love!

So you see, I am giving you these rather childish examples to show to you that even
the coming together of two things is a most difficult thing in nature. That a seed should
fall in the right place where conditions exist for it to germinate is one of the miracles
of nature, for instance. Nature anticipates this enormous difficulty and provides
millions of seeds. Otherwise, there would have been no survival of life at all. Imagine
one tree having one seed, and that seed being rotten, or eaten up by something. In no
time at all such a species would cease to exist.

And you have the famous parable of the sower in the Christian tradition, about how
the sower of the seed went forth and sowed his seeds, and some fell on rocks and
stony ground and were eaten by the birds. Some fell among brambles and thorns, and
were choked to death, choked by that vegetation. And a few fell on fertile soil and
germinated.The sower's business seems to have been over with that. But farmers and
agriculturists know that that is not enough. After the seed germinates, there are so
many problems, until it becomes a tree.

So life is something which struggles to express itself. It has to struggle to come into
existence first. And how enormously powerful this struggle for life, this struggle for
existence is I understood when I read that seeds taken from the tombs of the pharoahs,
who were dead five thousand years ago, could yet germinate when they were sown
again. This proves two things to us, you see. That life is extremely fragile and can be
destroyed most senselessly without anybody knowing about it; at the same time, it has
such an enormous inner potency for existence that it can span literally eons of time. It
depends on us, in which way we permit that life to act.

Now this is what the Master does for us, you see. Many people said he was
generous — he was very generous. He was loving, he was kind, all these things, you
see. Of course, nobody will deny these things. But if we examine it more deeply, we
find his generosity was that of the sower who had a bag full of seeds and went about
sowing them, without distinction of where the seeds fell. But one difference between
him and the ordinary sower is that he had an infinite bag which never became empty.
So he could receive all of us without distinction, without examination, without even
thinking whether we are fit to receive his grace or not.

And why did he do this? Well, at the human level, I suppose it was kindness and
love. But I am not prepared to accept that that was all. He was charged with the
responsibility of raising the next crop, even if it was only one single plant which he
himself represented. And live or die, as we say, he had to achieve this. Even if it
meant that he had to sow millions of seeds over tens of years. So in that sense, his
love, his generosity were to me — this is my personal view of the whole thing — a
struggle for self-perpetuation. And what was His self? It was the self of a master who
was prepared to sacrifice everything. He had to see that the line of masters continues
unbroken. So that is my inference. Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps I am right, I don't
know. Of course, his minimum expectation was that there should be at least one.

What did his generosity mean, in real terms? It means that while he needed one, he
was prepared to accept millions of us, and to try to make each one of us like himself,
if that was possible. Now in nature this is possible, because when a seed germinates,
it has to be like the parent tree, there is no question about it. Every botanist, every
biologist knows this. Well, it's a grace of God that even human beings only produce
human beings, at least in form. But the further propagation of the human being as a
human being seems to be much more difficult. Because nature, having endowed us
with the intellect and the will, has bestowed upon us, I think rather wrongly, rather
unwisely, a freedom to do with ourselves as we will. And it is a well-known fact that
we have to experiment a great deal with ourselves, our thoughts, our actions, before
we become really capable of handling our freedom in the right way.

That was one of the lessons of my Master, that freedom is not something to be
enjoyed, but something to be used. I think it is a tragedy of human understanding that
freedom is to be enjoyed. I don't know how this stupid idea of freedom ever came into
the human mind, because it is the most destructive thought that ever arose in the human
mentality. And if you see the drunkards, drug addicts, rapists all around you, it is
because of this misuse of the idea of freedom, leading to the misuse of the act of
freedom itself.

And what are the consequences of such misuse of our freedom? Loss of freedom!
Because even a hospital means loss of freedom. We may not be behind bars; though
psychopaths, schizophrenics, they may also find themselves behind bars, and imagine
it is not a jail. But the worst prisons are the prisons of our conscience. When a man is
forced to go into himself and examine himself, and is unable to come out of himself,
that is what produces the ultimate horror, paranoia, things like that, where you cannot
wake the man up and bring him out of that inner reality into which he has sort of
regressed. You cannot bring him out of that inner reality into which he has regressed
almost totally, and which is so frightening, because there he sees himself as he is, and
he is terrified of bringing it out. So it is the ultimate fear of the self and its
degradation.

All this was created by a false understanding of freedom. I don't think any rational
person could possibly controvert this idea. This is what my Master taught. That is,
dear friends, dear brothers and sisters, don't have wrong ideas of freedom. Freedom is
given to you to achieve yet greater levels of freedom by the light use of freedom.

This applies to education. Education gives us a mental freedom which we would

never know had we not been educated. The same thing applies to technology, science,
everything, you see. All these freedoms that we acquire by the application of the
human intelligence to our environment, compel us to exercise the greatest restraint in
the use of those freedoms to provide for a common evolution of all of us. I must
emphasize, common evolution of all of us. Because every rich man, every educated
man will claim, "Yes, but I am using it for my evolution. I had a hundred francs, I
started a small business. Today I own ten factories, and millions of dollars in Swiss
accounts." Such a person may think he has evolved by looking at his bank account. His
bank account has certainly evolved, but he has not evolved. I mean, that's a simple
fact. Rich people are not necessarily good people even, and almost never are they
evolved people. Not because they are rich — though the Christian tradition does say
that even a camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but a rich man shall never enter
the doors of heaven.

Incidentally, there is a very humorous story told to me once by Master on this

particular subject. An ordinary man like all of us here died and went to the gate of
heaven. And the angel on duty made him wait, saying that his records had to be
checked before he could be admitted. He had been standing there for ten or twelve
hours, very tired. very disappointed and, in some way quite, what shall I say,
disenchanted with the whole thing. He assumed that once you get to heaven, everything
will be hoity-toity, you see, everything will be nice. And here he was, standing for
twelve hours, fourteen hours, and nothing seemed to be happening. He kept reminding
the angel on duty, but he didn't get any action out of him.

After he had been there nearly a whole day, another soul came. Immediately there
was a frantic exchange between the angel on duty and some inner sanctum (sanctum
sanctorum). There was hurried activity everywhere, the gates were thrown open, a
red carpet was spread, and the heavenly equivalent of a car with a chauffeur came and
drove this soul to God. This poor fellow who was waiting asked the angel, "Who was
that guy who just went in?" He said, "Well, he's one of the richest and most powerful
men on earth who just died." Then this fellow said, "How come you sent him in, but I
am still waiting here? Twenty-four hours have gone." The angel said, "Look, that's not
my business. You better ask the boss inside when you get there."

Eventually this poor soul reached the audience chamber of God, and as soon as he
reached there he said, "God, I have a question to ask." God smiled and said, "Yes, my
son! What is your question?" He said, "Well look, I've been waiting here twenty-four
hours, I don't want to complain, but how come this rich guy got in so fast? I didn't think
there would be this nepotism and corruption in heaven too." God smiled and said, "My
son, you need to have a great deal of understanding in these matters." He said, "Yes
God, I am prepared to do it if you will kindly explain how this happens here." So then
God said, "My son, people like you come to me in millions every day; but a soul like
that comes once in millions of years. Don't you think he deserved some special
reception?" So this was the answer of God. This was a story told to me by Master
himself.

Now I was wondering why this should be so. Why the very rich cannot reach there?
Why the very intelligent don't seem to reach there so easily? And then I found that like
any instrument which we possess, the first tendency is to use it for our own welfare.
We don't think of others. I have money — I spend it for myself. I have a car — I go
myself where I want. Whereas the one who has nothing is forced to serve. And that is
the secret, you see. That by true service, having nothing at our disposal, we can
become that which no one can become, when he has everything at his disposal. One
who has nothing can become everything by service. Whereas one who has everything
becomes nothing, because he cannot serve.

So it is service of others that makes us evolve. Very simple, very simple to

understand. And a truth emphasized by all religions, "Serve others!" This has always
been the call of spirituality, religion, everything, you see. And who does this most
capably? A master who has no instruments, no wealth, no teaching, no education, no
power even, but yet has that infinite capacity of service, which gives him the ability, it
can be called even unnatural ability, of penetrating into the heart of things. And that is
what we call understanding, too. Because even in language we say, "That is the heart
of the matter." So how is it that a master is able to understand us so easily without
knowing us, without asking questions of us, without studying our bio-data? It is
because in one glance he goes right into our hearts and sees what we are.
 I have found that most people were afraid of sitting before my Master when they
were new to him. Because intuitively they understood that before him all was open.
There could be no secrets before such a person. And foolishly, childishly, many
avoided being in his presence, thinking that if there is a wall between them, he could
not see them. See, isn't it foolish to imagine that one who can penetrate through our rib
cage and our flesh and blood and go into the heart can be stopped by a mere wall or
by mere walls? But it was not merely foolishness. It was an unwillingness to reveal to
him our uncleanliness, our degradation.

And how did I discover this? Because Master used to go to such persons himself,
under one pretext or the other, and by some gesture, by a glance, he could almost
always bring them back with him. In a sense, he was assuring them, "Don't be afraid of
me, don't be shy of yourself. Don't be afraid of revealing yourself; not because I know
everything, but because you are not really very different from the others." It's only a
difference of degree, you see. He has stolen ten rupees, you have stolen a million,
that's all. Like saying, "She has broken two hearts, you have broken seven." So it was
a compassion born in him out of a profound understanding of the sameness of human
nature.

I think I told a story somewhere, perhaps in Vorauf, about Dr. Varadachari — about
a young man who was weeping and feeling miserable and fell at Dr. Varadachari's
feet, and when he asked him, "Why are you weeping so much?", he said, "Sir, help me,
I am a great sinner." Dr. Varadachari was profoundly annoyed. He asked this young
fellow, "What sin have you committed? A bottle of wine, a woman? Come back to me
when you have done something original! Which fool has not done these things?" You
see, this was his answer. I mean, such an answer could not come unless you have the
profoundest meaning of what human life is. And as my Master once explained to me
when I told him the story of Dr. Varadachari and that boy, he said, "There is a greater
sin, which perhaps he did not realize. And that is to be conscious of one's sin."

We should never imagine or think about what we have done. Things of the past are
in the past, they cannot be changed by any means. But from this moment you can
change yourself, and for that every assistance is available, every power is available.
And what is the higher sin even than that? It is to deny this opportunity for self-
correction and go on, on the path of evolution, and seek to remain as we are, with
foolish ideas, animalistic ideas, of pleasure, enjoyment, freedom, things like that. So
Master said, "That is a bigger sin than any sin you can possibly commit with your
body."

Now I think it is by an inner feeling of this truth, an inner realisation of this truth,
that most people who come to spirituality come here at all. Why do we come to a
master? It shows an inner discontent with what we are. Otherwise there is no reason. I
mean, I cannot imagine a possible reason for trying to change yourself. No one will
attempt to change himself or herself if they are really happy with themselves and their
circumstance.So the seed of change, inner change, comes from discontent with what
we are, discontent, dissatisfaction, disappointment, whatever it be, you see.

Unfortunately, human beings try to handle this discontent by further satiation in the
pleasures that they are having. By imagining that the pleasure which one bottle of wine
could not give, could be given by a second bottle, or by a third bottle. So, stupidly,
selfdestructively, we indulge in repetitive activities of this sort. It is like some of these
streets, dead-end streets, where there is a wall across the street and, like a buffalo,
you try to butt your way through it. Pull back, ram your head against it, pull back, ram
your head against it! If at all you achieve anything it will be a broken head! Therefore,
in their love lives, they have broken hearts. Because we try to throw this heart again
and again at the same wall of resistance, same wall of hatred, and the poor heart
breaks. So whose fault is it? When an animal does it, we say, "Stupid animal." When
we do it, we are Europeans, we come from the EC community, we are rich, we are
white, we are educated, we are intelligent, and the highest arrogance is that our
passports can take us anywhere. The American is at the top, of course. Well, it is a
joke, but it is a real thing too.

Claude might suggest that in India we have the same foolishness. Yes, we have. But
we know we are foolish. So in that sense, we are less stupid that our Western brothers
and sisters. Because, there starts the humility, which says, "I am not that wise, that
intelligent guy that I thought myself to be." And the only thing that I have proved can
help me by being repeated again and again, by doing it again and again, can anyone
tell me what it is? It is begging! Begging at the Master's door. Because there, there is
no refusal.

So this secret we have in India and in other Eastern societies, but unfortunately
there we beg at human beings' doors, you see, for material food, that being a
consequence of poverty. So that again is an excuse, you see, that they are forced to beg
for their existence. Here we are surrounded by prosperity, by plenty, by high
technology, and what do we use it for? More and more electricity, generated by more
and more atomic powerplants, which brings about the possibility of death, not only of
the Western societies, but unfortunately threatening to export it to the East also.

So we are faced with this rather fascinating but un-understandable fact that the
highest education, the highest technology has only created self-destructive tendencies
here. And these tendencies have to be corrected, and therefore there is all the more
need for yogic pursuits here in the West. That is why my Master used to emphasize that
in a society where these powers of the mind, of science, of technology, are available,
he said, "Don't look down on such societies because for the moment they are morally
aberrated." I was surprised. I said, "Babuji, you don't think they are morally
degraded?" He said, "Yes, of course, but it is a temporary thing." He said, "If that is
corrected, if their mental tendencies are corrected, that is where civilisation will
flower afresh. Because they have all the possibilities hidden within themselves
covered over by the slime and filth of their own stupidity. And that, by Lalaji's grace, I
can easily clear away."

So you see, there is a double-pronged feature in all these things, like in everything.
There is a plus, there is a minus. We have not the plus at all in the East. We are a
negative society. We are afraid of sins, not because of sinning, because somehow
sinning seems to be very pleasant, but because of the consequences of sinning. So we
have lost the ability to do anything fresh, to try anything. That is, Eastern societies lack
initiative. Now this is a defeatist attitude to life. And one great disease in the East,
especially in my land, is the doctrine of karma. So we too have the potential, you see.
We have all the soul power, all the aspiration, but we are too afraid to try anything
because we may be wrong. Here also you have everything, but you are prepared to try
every wrong thing to prove that it is wrong, before you will accept the right. Because
in some way, doing the right seems to be too childish! You see, it is so easy to do what
is right.

So we both suffer, but because of different tendencies. This answers why generally
masters have been born in the East, and also why generally they have been more
successful in the West. Because the steam power is there, the road to evolution is
here! This is some sort of a very generalized analysis of the picture, but it is very true,
because Master often told me this. He was asked always by several people, "How is
it that the people of the West, so morally corrupt, degraded, are yet so successful in
everything they do?" Master said, "The answer is very simple. Their mind is capable
of working in one direction, whether it is research or anything else." This is the secret,
you see.

Whereas the Eastern mind is always divided, always divided into multiple
channels. And religion has been its greatest enemy in the East. Because they have gods
for everything — gods of love, gods of wealth, gods of education, gods for science,
technology, grass, mangos, anything, you see. So the mind is divided into multiple
channels. It becomes powerless, listless. So what has to be done is for the East to
bring its mind together into one channel. And what is necessary in the West is to use
the already canalized mind in the right way. Both will succeed, and both are easy.

All that the East has to do is to forget the other channels and stick to one. And after
all this is simple, because every man who owns a television set knows that while it
may have thirty-two channels, you can use only one at a time. So that is the Western
wisdom - Do one thing at a time, and do it well. Therefore they are successful in their
sins and in their virtues. Unfortunately my Eastern brothers and sisters, with multiple
mental channels, are successful neither in their sins nor in their virtues. So this is the
tragic circumstance facing society, human society, all over the world.

So my Master's message to the West was, and is, "Think of the goal and go towards
it." So in that sense, dear brothers and sisters, our problem here is much easier and
capable of faster solution. And it is to this opportunity that we must rise. Not merely to
satisfy some Master sitting in Shahjahanpur, but to fulfill our responsibilities and
duties to ourselves. Because it is futile to think of society, ecology, and all this
nonsense, unless the individual human mind is changed, and every human being
becomes capable of recognizing where his welfare lies, what his goal is, what our
duties and responsibilities are. All that governments are trying to do to rectify the
present ecological disaster, AIDS, things like that, they can only be cosmetic changes,
nothing more than that. So if we want to change our society, the ancient wisdom says
what it has always said, "Change yourself."

Thank you.
 Marseilles, 12 July 1986
While going on the morning walk, I was thinking what exactly a road is. They are so
common these days, and so beautifully made, we have stopped wondering what they
really are. And most of us don't know that there was a time when we had to go through
the jungle, through the desert, on our feet, in carts and also over the seas to go from
one place to another place. So what is a road? It is a flat strip, very nicely made, over
which we can move fast and easily and reach our destination safely in the shortest
possible time, whatever be the terrain that we pass through; we may pass through
jungles, up and down mountains, over rivers, because a bridge is nothing but a road
across a river.

And that is how Sahaj Marg is to be looked at, as a road that the Master has laid
for us. We can say it is a royal road through life. I would like to try and discuss with
you today that a journey is nothing but travel from the starting point to the destination
and all that we see on the way is nothing but scenery, some good scenery, some bad,
some difficult, some easy. Similarly life should be looked upon as nothing but a field
of events and circumstances through which we pass, and if there is an easy road,
accessible to all, that life can have as little impact or difficulty for us as when we
motor on the autobahn from one place to the other.

So what is life? Because some people say, "Life is difficult," some people say,
"Life is easy," some people say, "Life is enjoyable." Life can be all this, but life need
not be any of this. Life is difficult or easy depending on whether you walk across it or
run across it. And wisdom says take the easiest way through it. And the difficulty
starts when we get out of our cars and start wandering around, taking a swim, plunging
into the depths. Then, we find that life is a mixture.

So I prefer to look upon life as nothing but events and circumstances, and if you see
the sameness of life that human beings seem to undergo, it almost looks as if we are all
passing through a fixed piece of territory, the same roads, the same restaurants, the
same trees, the same lakes and mountains. Some pass through it fast, some through it
slowly, some relax, for some the car breaks down, and they have a lot of problems,
too. So it is not enough just to have the road, the vehicle must also be safe and
dependable, and of course, accidents can happen any time; so we go through it, and we
must see that we drive safely. And nowadays we know how we drive from one place
to the other fast, we don't look to this side or that side, and that is the way we should
go through life, too.
 You have seen schoolboys sometimes, in villages, going to school. In India they
walk, of course, sometimes five, six kilometres. Some never reach school because
there are the mango trees, the tamarind trees, every little distraction stops them on the
way, and most children reach school only after lunch time; but inevitably when coming
home, they rush fast, because it will be dark.

So that is another lesson for us, you see, that if we are going to be distracted by
every small thing which is on the way, we are never going to reach our destination. So
if we look at life as a fixed scene of events, circumstances, hurdles, then we will see
that they really have no attraction. It is we who endow them with attraction. Nature has
nothing beautiful or ugly, as I said yesterday. That is why you can see sometimes four
people traveling together in one car: one becomes crazy when he sees a lake, another
becomes crazy when he sees a mountain, the fourth becomes crazy when he sees a
restaurant, etc. Which of these are really attractive nobody can say, because it is how
we react to these scenes that makes it attractive, or non-attractive.

So remember one thing, that all this craziness about beauty, and lovely things, and
nature, it really does not exist. Of course the scientists say, "Well, it is all atoms, and
atoms are nothing but electric charges." So in the eyes of science, nothing really exists.
But we say, "Oh! Look! You know, such a beautiful girl, how can you say she does not
exist? She is there, and very beautiful." So how can I deny the existence of such a
beautiful thing, or is it attractiveness? The scientist says, "Yes, yes, but you know, it's
just a bundle of energy." But this fellow won't give up, he says, "What lovely energy in
any case! ..." Now comes a third man who says, "This is beautiful? You must be
crazy." He does not deny the existence of the girl, he is not bothered about the science
which says she isn't there. To him she is not beautiful. Now what is she really? So this
is what the ancient wisdom says, "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder," If we accept
this as true, a beautiful object exists only for one who sees it as beautiful.

So what is real beauty? There is no such thing. Therefore there is no such thing as
attractiveness. It is attractive to the one who is attracted by it. Similarly food — it is
tasty to the one who finds it tasty. This brings us to the consideration of the fact that
nothing in these terms of value exists in an object, except what we put into them. Let us
deal with a subject like temptation for example! The normal tendency is to say, "Oh,
so and so tempted me" or "Such and such a thing tempted me," but wisdom says, "the
temptation was in me," In the form of samskaras which had been already created by an
earlier action of mine or thought of mine, and which now responds in some mysterious
way to another object which it finds attractive. Now if this is a fact, one who has
advanced spiritually, whose tendencies, whose samskaras have been cleaned off, he
will be able to develop within himself the ability to see or perceive totally
objectively. So you understand that.

The second thing is for such a person there can be no such thing like attraction or
repulsion, nor can there be such a thing as temptation, because there is nothing in him
to react to anything outside. See, we are all familiar with the phenomenon of
magnetism, for instance. The iron reacts to the magnet. Similarly we have the
phenomenon of resonance; where there are two strings, when one is plucked the other
will vibrate, only if it is at the same pitch. There also the same principle applies.

Therefore we find the old proverb, "Birds of a feather flock together." So there is
an inner response to a thing outside. The response is within us. We must understand
this and accept this very clearly. Now on one side you have the dead man who sees
nothing, who responds to nothing, and we are very familiar with that. A corpse cannot
possibly be tempted even by a Helen of Troy, for instance.

But when we talk of these things — that attractiveness will go, temptation will stop
— in a sense we become afraid. Because the human being is attracted to the idea of
pleasure and enjoyment, and he says, "What will life be if I don't respond in some way
to these things?" But there Master says, "If you respond, don't forget you cannot have
control over the response, because the response is because of a samskara, and to say,
"Oh no! I will respond to it with a very controlled sequence of events, you see!" — it
cannot possibly be done. It is like a man saying, "I will set fire to this big petroleum
tank with only one single match stick. It does not matter, because it is only a match
stick." So the instrument may be a single match stick, but what is going to burn is a
whole petrol installation.

That is why very often we find we are bewildered, because we start things in a
small way, and they gather momentum, and very soon we have no control over the
events or over ourselves. But human beings have very little perception in this matter,
and even though we have done small things so often which have led to big, terrible
tragedies also, we still behave as if we were little children playing with matchsticks.

So the first wisdom of the Master is to say, "My dear friend, beware of initiating an
event, because once it is started off, it has its own way, it has its own life." Therefore
the wise men don't act. That is why all philosophies speak of a passive acceptance of
what is happening to you, because, in some way, when we interfere with these things
by an act of our will, a third force is introduced. So you can say it is like an
experiment which a scientist is doing in a laboratory. Now suppose a third man comes
and introduces some new element into it, and the scientist does not know about it,
what is going to happen to the experiment? It takes its own way, nobody knows what it
is. So my Master always said, "Our life is our samskaras unfolding in front of us. That
is, we carry our life within us. It is not outside." Please understand this very carefully.

You know we have this common saying, "I am going out to enjoy life." It shows
very gross misunderstanding of what life is. On the contrary, it is our samskaras
spreading our life in front of us as we walk on, and you can consider this spreading
out as a sort of a tape which is punched with holes, like you have for your telex
machine, for instance! And based on the program punched into that, we respond to
what is outside us. So we create our life as we go through it, our pleasures, our
sadnesses, our tragedies, our ecstasies, they are created with our own program carried
within ourselves. They don't exist outside. This is the most fundamental teaching of
Sahaj Marg. Therefore Master says, Babuji Maharaj has said, "Change the program,
life is different." Now in these days of computers this should be very easy to
understand for the Western mind, because all that you have to do is to take another
floppy disk and insert a new program! So easy!! Isn't it?

In the East we may not be able to understand this, because we are unfamiliar with
these concepts of the computer program, and the ability to change the program. But
here in the West every child can do it. Now this is the mysterious foolishness of the
human mind; why can't we translate this ability to change our lives ourselves? See,
there is one — what shall I say — beautiful aspect if you look at it from the program
aspect. It's the beauty of the program that it can beat the programmer itself. You know,
for instance, you can program a chess game, and even if the programmer is a
competent programmer, and also simultaneously a grandmaster of chess, he can
program a game which will beat him every time he plays it.

So this shows that once we make a program, we are no longer masters of that
program. That is why we find ourselves unable to change the events in our lives, the
circumstances in our lives, because as long as this program is within us, we have to
play the game according to it. So how to change our lives? Not by changing jobs,
wives, houses; this is not possible, you see. In the West, we have tried all these
combinations, but life has not changed.

So what does Master say? In his usual benevolence, in his enormous mercy, charity,
he says, "Give me the program, I will change it for you." Now unfortunately it is not a
disk that I can put into an envelope and mail to him. It is within me, it cannot be taken
out. So spirituality says, "Go to your master and surrender at his feet, because he is
the only person who has the key to unlock your programmed chest and remove it and
change it for you, reprogram it for you."
 The Master says, "Do you want a change of program or do you want something
which will not have a program at all?" Because he is a Master, he can make it work
without a disk. But we are still used to these things, all these normal human
tendencies, and then we have the situation where an abhyasi says, "Babuji, can I enjoy
life for ten years more and then come back to you?" But then we must realize again a
program has been put into us, and again we lose control over it, because the program
takes over.

So what is this freedom which we think we are having? We all claim we are free.
We can go where we like, do what we want, enjoy what we choose. Now it is my
suggestion that these are all false. There is no freedom at all. Because even though I
may be a slave of nothing else, yet I am a slave of my program, and it guides me
inexorably the way it wants. Now, unfortunately, here we cannot blame an IBM or an
Apple, you see and say they created the wrong program, because here the programmer
is ourselves, myself. So normally we should be able to do the reprogramming
ourselves.

This is what happened in the old days when Sahaj Marg did not exist, and we had
to work for thousands of years, under most difficult circumstances and, in some way,
try to remove this program without having any effects. I already told you that it took
forty-five years to move from the first point to the second point by self-effort of the
highest order, and that was only the first step. So, given our program and our own self
to operate it, it would seem that there is almost no possibility of changing the program
by ourselves. So it becomes inevitable that we accept the idea of external assistance,
and that is what the Master is. He is one who helps us to change our program, or to
erase it altogether, and says, "Your program will be the same as my program. Then
your life will be parallel to mine. You'll walk the same road that I am walking, you'll
go to the same destination to which I am going, which means nothing but that we can
walk hand in hand together to the destination." So this is the enormous benefit of
accepting a guide, a master, because no more have I an inexorable program to follow.
He takes me on. But to do this, we must be prepared to want to become like him, and
to like or accept the destination to which he is taking us.

Most human beings don't seem to be attracted by this thought. Therefore we are left
with the only other alternative, to follow our own life! There is no third way, you see.
Because many people ask, "Can we not have a balance between spirituality and our
own life?" ... They find the word 'balance' very attractive, but here I don't know what
it means. It is like trying to operate the computer with two different programs running
at the same time; I don't know if it's possible, because then all predictability will be
lost, and we don't know where we are going.
 So why am I saying this? There are only two choices before us. To be as we are,
content with what we are going to be, following the way we have created ourselves to
a destination which does not exist, because it is going round and round in circles —
because Sahaj Marg says, "As you go the same path again and again, the same
samskaras are going to deepen more and more, and nothing is going to change, except
that you probably live the same life more and more intensely every time." No
destination — it's like going on one of those giant wheels in fairs which children ride,
and like a wheel, there is no exit point until you come back to the starting point. Then
you have to wait, you see! Once a life is started you have to wait until it ends, when a
possibility of a change perhaps might exist.

This we find in parables, you know, mythological parables dealing with death,
where the soul crosses a river, loses its memory of the past, exists for some time
somewhere, and when the time comes for it to return, it is offered a choice of what it
would like to take for the next life. Some parables say, not all, some parables, that the
mysterious thing is, we choose the same thing again and again! That is why death does
not erase samskaras. Many people say, "Oh, if I had another chance, I could live life
differently." Wisdom says, "No," because all that happens in death, or during the life
after this life ends, is that it's a period of rest, because the soul is unable to bear the
bhoga of the samskaras any more. This body is cast off. The soul rests, relaxes, gains
strength and comes into this life again, trying to work off the samskaras once again.
Very nice!

So life is the second chance, not death! But as we live once again, we are adding
more samskaras ... so the inevitability of renewing the same cycle again and again.
This cannot possibly be denied or broken except by external circumstances which
says, "Stop this nonsense, get hold of this wheel." But then if you cling to the wheel
like children and say, "No, I like it so much!" the Master says, "Don't forget, once you
are above the ground, you have no choice, again you have to complete the whole
circle."

So the moral is that once you are in life, there exists no force in the universe which
can change your life for you, not yourself, not your friends and relations, not your
lovers, not even those who hate you, they are also equally powerless — and not even
God Himself! So this life is the place where we are prisoners, but we think it is a vast
playground of humanity dotted with pleasure points, and we go blindly, you see, trying
to drink ourselves faster and faster to a death which we welcome.

In a sense, the more we seek pleasure, I think, the more it reflects an inner tendency
towards death. Because a stage must come when our samskaras are so heavy that we
may possibly want to cease to exist altogether. That is possibly the suicidal instinct,
the development of the suicidal instinct, which people seem to find so attractive
sometimes. But the spiritual science warns us to beware! Suicidal tendency is nothing
but another tendency you are adding to your samskaras, and if the Master is
compassionate and loves us He says, "Commit suicide once, the possibility of
committing it a second time immediately comes into being. And if you respond to that
second impulse, you will convert your life to another series of circles where each
time you are committing suicide again and again, nothing more."

So what is the wisdom the Master is trying to teach us? He says, "My dear boy,
there is no solution in death, the solution lies in life, you see. Seek it here while you
are alive. I am here to help you! And the only way is by changing your program
altogether, because by changing elements of the program here and there, you achieve
nothing. A house is a house, whether it has three or four rooms; a wife is a wife
whether she is beautiful or ugly. A job is a job. Why do you endow these things with
unnecessary values that you are imagining from your samskaras' burden? I will put into
you a program which has no samskaras, and then you will realize what a house is,
what a life is, what a wife is, what a job is, as they are in reality." Then we understand
that like a road when it splits into two at a fork, you cannot follow both, even for one
kilometer. You cannot say, "I shall follow both for some time. Then I shall choose one
of the roads." Is it possible? You have to take this or that.

Now when the Master comes and offers a choice, you have the choice. The
freedom-loving people have a choice. Yes, I will go left, or I will go right. Even the
Master cannot take you on both. This is the foolishness of persons who imagine that
because they encounter Master, they can, with abandon, follow part of the old life
while also participating in spirituality. They think that they can follow spiritual
practices and also cling to the old ways. Not at all possible! I mean I am also unhappy
that it is not possible, you see — I also like my chocolates, but it is not possible.

So at that moment when we come into the Master's influence, in our heart we must
accept that here we have to make a choice, and there is no changing it afterwards. Of
course, mercifully, he continues to give us some biscuits and chocolates, that is his
mercy, you see. We cannot seek it.

So what is the second choice? The first choice was that we continue as we are. The
second choice is this: that we accept the Master and willingly hand over ourselves to
him and tell him, "I have wandered through all the beautiful roads all my life, I haven't
found my destination. Now I'll follow you." So this is the way we have to accept
spirituality and the Master's help, and if we are able to do it, we shall be successful,
we shall be free in the real sense. If we don't, we are equally free to destroy
ourselves.

Thank you.
 Marseilles, 13 July 1986 — Morning
We have been examining the Master's teachings in some detail, and we have found that
they are very simple and based essentially on cultivating values in our existence
without much reference to knowledge: values of truth, kindness, charity, love,
sympathy, things like that. We have also seen that for all humanity the problems are the
same. Many people say, for Easterners spirituality is easy. Yesterday I have tried to
show you that it is not easy at all. It is difficult for all humans throughout the world,
but for different reasons. So the only thing that distinguishes the Easterners from the
Westerners is that while the difficulties are there for both, the details of the difficulties
are different. So humanity seems to share a common heritage, a common goal, and in
fact, commonness in most things. That is why we call ourselves one.

All human beings are one. This was one great reason why Babuji never felt it
necessary to distinguish between the East and the West. Because for him a human
being was a human being. I say this specifically, because many of the teachers have
made a distinction, offering different teachings to different societies, and to me that
always looked a little like dishonesty. Because it's like giving cheap bread to an
Indian, rotten bread to an African, a little unwholesome bread to the Italians and
reserving the good bread for ourselves. That is not humanity, that is not brotherhood,
that is not love.

So my Master had one teaching for all human beings. He had one goal for all of us.
And he was also one Master for all of us. There was no distinction, and he upheld the
teachings that he is teaching us, that Sahaj Marg has no distinctions of caste, race,
colour, creed, sex, and any of these things. So when we, in our turn, practice these
things and come together in meetings like this, we should uphold these values amongst
ourselves, too. We should understand that we are united, not because we love each
other, because as yet that is a very questionable thing (I mean, whether we love each
other yet) but we come together, because we have one Master, we have one goal, and
we are all practicing one system.

So it is this commonness which is uniting us here. And that commonness must

flower into a mutual love and respect. What is our work, we have to do it ourselves.
Because, as you all know, we may travel in the same train to the same destination, but
we need not be friends. In fact, we can be quarreling all the time and yet go to the
destination. But Babuji always emphasized the need for brotherhood, too. It is not
enough for us to achieve our individual goal, but we have to build a brotherhood
based on his principles. That is one of the three reasons why he insisted on group
sittings.

Many people ask, especially new abhyasis, "Why is there a need for a group
satsangh?" He offered three reasons. The first was that when we all sit down and
meditate together, the effort is magnified, and is much more than the sum of individual
effort. The second reason is when we come together on occasions like this, in
satsangh, in group meetings, first we learn to tolerate each other, then we learn to have
mutual respect for each other and, finally, it is hoped, that we shall love each other,
too. That is the second reason for group satsangh. The third reason is a very simple
one. He wishes it, therefore we obey his wish.

So you see, the group meetings are very important. Because they multiply the effort
that we make, the results are far in excess of the sum of individual effort, and we learn
by stages: tolerance, respect, and love. I also feel these is a fourth reason. That is, the
opportunity to be together should not be misused. Because sometimes it seems to me
that if we are alone, we have less chance of going amiss, astray. And so, to be together
means an opportunity and a test. So we have to rise to that too, and while being
together preserve our independent integrity.

So this was one great aspect of his practice, you see, that he could bring people
together under one common roof, forgetting all our differences of race, language,
nationalistic ideas, proving what he always maintained, that where religions divide
human beings, spirituality unites. That was his highest truth, and again proves his first
statement, the credo of Sahaj Marg, that where religion ends, spirituality begins.

We are frequently being asked, "Can I worship Christ and meditate?" "Can I
worship Buddha and meditate?" We must understand that these are like staircases in
one building, you see. And it is like saying this escalier is Hindu, this escalier is
Buddhist, that is Christian. That is why Master used to say, "Religions are the
kindergarten schools for human beings." They give us some idea of what God is and
try to instill in us basic ethical and moral values, nothing more than that. I don't think
any religion has ever succeeded in really linking man with God.

If you study the history of religions, the founders of the religions got what they got
by meditation — whether it was Christ or Buddha. They achieved what they achieved,
and in all of them it was by meditation. This is what the respective traditions say, it is
not something we say. Christ went up on the mountain and meditated for forty days, he
was tempted by the Devil, things like that, you see; Buddha meditating under the bodhi
tree, again for forty days or forty-one days.
 So, as I was telling some of our Italian abhyasis yesterday, Christ, to my
knowledge, was not a Christian, but his teachings became Christianity. He achieved
his link with God by direct communion with the Ultimate, through meditation. The
same thing for Buddha and Buddhism. Before Buddha there was no Buddhism. Buddha
was not a Buddhist. Now I ask this question, "If Buddha could achieve God without
being a Buddhist, and Christ claimed that he was the son of God without being a
Christian, where is the need for any one of us to be in any of these religions?" So I
would request all of you to think over this very carefully.

To claim that only one religion or one God can take you to God is ridiculous, and
as much a lie as to say that only one school can produce good students and not another
school. I hope you understand this. Or to say that only one country can produce good
people and not another country. Because, if we understand this point correctly and not
think about it with our heads, but with our hearts, we will come to that great truth, that
God does not offer different opportunities to different people. When we say God is
merciful, God is love, He cannot be different to different people or different races.
And when we say God made man in His own image, how can a Christian be better
than a Buddhist or vice versa?

So, what it boils down to is that He gave us the same opportunity. He Himself
became our goal, and periodically He sent down people to assist us, called masters.
But like anything which comes from above and comes below, things slowly get harder
and harder. And that is the problem with religions. Because you find today every
religion says, "Without me you cannot exist." Christ said it, "I am the way and the light
and the truth, and none can reach the Father but through me." I agree, it was not a lie,
but it had a limited truth when he was alive. In his time, perhaps, he was the door to
heaven, you see. And, like a door, it is there for people who are willing to walk
through it. It cannot claim that there cannot be other doors. Even our ordinary houses
have several doors, a front door, a back door, a side door. And can it be that the house
of God can have only one door? And that in the Vatican in Rome? You see, it's not
possible.

In fact, there is no house of God. It is a vast umbrella without pillars, without

anything, you see. And the ancient Indian wisdom says, it has the courage to say, one
of the most famous Vedic statements, "The truth is one but the wise men speak of it
differently." Therefore we find this enormous big-heartedness, large-heartedness in the
rishis of India. Nowhere else do you find it. And that is why the Vedas have no
authors. We don't have a Gospel according to Luke and Mark, because we believe that
the ultimate wisdom is not human, it is a revelation by the Divine.
 So, in our turn, we must understand two things, that God does not differentiate
between one human and another. He has not two ways, that one is easy and one is
difficult. The way to Him is always the same for all human beings in all times. This is
the truth of spirituality, and especially of Sahaj Marg. And the proof is here before
you, that we are here from many lands, many races, many languages, and we are able
to live with at least some degree of harmony, some degree of co-operation, precisely
because in our heart we have felt this truth. We have intuitively perceived this truth in
our heart, that our Master loved us without distinction, taught us the same things,
withheld nothing from any of us, offered us the same goal. I emphasize this because
even in India, there have been teachers who have had different teachings for different
areas, which, to say the least, is a shame.

So my Master stood for one humanity, one God, one teaching and one practice, no
difference between us. So all are welcome, all receive the same teaching, all are
assisted by the same Master, and all are taken to the same goal. Here there is no
question of passports, visas, security, nothing, you see. This is the most important
aspect of my Master's generosity, and as he himself said, his heart was the playground
for all humanity!

Now what is it, that we blunder around in — make a mistake — when we stick to
our religions? It is like a prisoner who has been let out of jail, preferring to go back to
his cell in the jail and saying, "No, no, I am safe here. You see. Mr. Justice Walter
Brown put me in jail, so I must be liberated only by him." But if you say, "My dear
friend, he has retired from service, today even the government has changed," he says,
"No, I only want him, not this man." Now there is a big confusion in this. Because it is
the law, the authority, which put us in jail, not an individual. And when I am released,
it is the same authority which releases me. It is foolish to think that that same person
who wielded the authority must come and release me now, that the same person must
come and release me who originally locked me up. So please try to understand that
authority works through human beings, but it is not the human being who works for us.

It's the same thing with religions or in spiritual practice. Those who are authorized
to work under the directions of the Ultimate, they offer us their assistance to connect
us with that Ultimate from which they have come. And this is an act of love for us, you
see. Even to say it is charity and mercy, it's reducing it to human terms. Because they
come from God, who is love, therefore they are all love. And it's a service of love that
they perform when they say, "Don't be miserable, don't suffer, come with me, I'll take
you up."

So all the service they offer is to relieve us of our sufferings and take us to our goal
fast. And it is based on love. This is the important thing that we must realize, another
distinction between the religions and spirituality. Because as my Master said,
"Religions use two instruments: temptation and fear." Love has no place in religion,
not in any religion. They either offer you a temptation and say, "I will take you to
heaven, if you are obedient and accept the Ten Commandments and confess every
Friday. And don't forget to put some money on the plate when you leave!", and on the
other side they threaten us, "If you don't do this and this and this, you shall go to hell."
So where is the love in this?

Spirituality says, "Forget the past." I told you the story the other day, about Dr.
Varadachari and an abhyasi. He said, "What sin have you committed? Come to me
when you have done something original." It doesn't exist. Because from the time of
Cain and Abel, the sins have been the same. Man raping woman, brother murdering
brother, your taking somebody else's property, what else can you do?

I have always been convinced, that to feel miserable about the sins we have
committed and to confess it even to a priest or to God, is again arrogance. If there is a
God who is listening to us, He must laugh. Surely, you see! He will say, "My dear
friend, even in sin you are the same as everybody else, what makes you think you are
great when you try to come to confess to me something you have done?" I mean
psychology says the same thing, that sometimes crimes are committed only to draw the
attention of society towards ourselves. So you see that the confession has no value.
Because, if you have done what you have done, knowing that you are doing it,
confession cannot erase the effects of that. And I don't think any priest has ever had the
power to excuse us of that mistake.

This is the spirituality my Master teaches, this truth, that what is in the past cannot
possibly be changed. What has been done has been done. Forget it. Start living a new
life from this moment. You see, this is the way of changing our lives. And he adds, "If
you sit and brood over the past, you are wasting time which should be used for
building your future. Don't waste time foolishly. Leave your past and your future to me.
Do what you have to do in the present, now." This is his clarion call to humanity. And
if you say, "Babuji what about my sins?" He smiles and says, "It is human nature."

So let us remember this, that when we make mistakes, it is a common human nature
that we all have. A Chinese thief is no better than a French thief, and no worse.
Because I sometimes find these racial criticisms, you know, "dirty black thieves," as if
a white thief is a clean thief. So you see, spirituality says, "Remove these distinctions
of colour, scratch the skin, and you are all the same inside." You are white because the
sun shines less here. Not because you descended with some divine dispensation at
your call. In fact, I often wonder why the whites are so much against the blacks (they
are critical of blacks), and all their life they spend enormous amounts of money on
suntan lotions. It doesn't make sense. does it?

So, these are, you see, these differences are not natural to us. These are created
differences. Created by religion, by politics, by society. We have been sort of
indoctrinated into these values. Because really, at heart, we are all loving people.
Again, the proof is here before us. So, what it really amounts to is, we have been
conditioned by our social, cultural, religious teaching, into mutual animosity and
hatred. And now comes a master like ours, who says, "You are one. You were always
one. But you have forgotten it. Now come together again. Become one, and march
ahead to a common destiny all together."

This is what satsangh really means, you see. Many people ask, "What is the
meaning of satsangh?" Satsangh does not mean sitting together, because even one
person can be in satsangh. In Sanskrit, sat means the truth, and He is the truth. God is
the truth. That's what Christ meant when he said, "I am the way and the light and the
truth." And sangha means, "to be together with." So satsangh means "to be associated
with the truth." So whenever we meditate, even alone, it is satsangh. And when five
hundred people sit or ten thousand people sit, it can be satsangh only when each one of
us is in touch with the truth, the reality of the Ultimate.

So if you are just sitting with eyes closed and thinking of baguette and honey, it is
not satsangh. Others may think it is satsangh. I say this because there are other groups
under other traditions singing together, dancing together, things like that, you see. And
this was a warning given to me long ago by Master — that this cannot be satsangh.
Because that which makes a satsangh a satsangh is missing. So remember this, that in a
satsangh the contact with the Ultimate must be maintained if it is to be a satsangh, and
if you are to benefit by that satsangh. Because each time we sit in satsangh and
establish that contact by His grace, we achieve several abilities, capacities. We are
able to establish the contact sooner and sooner, and the contact also becomes stronger
and stronger, until one day it becomes a permanent contact of the strongest type.

This is why we have to meditate every day, until that act of meditation becomes so
perfect that, as Master once told me, "If a man sits and becomes able to plunge into
that perfect meditation, he cannot come out of it." So that is meditation, real
meditation. Because it is like, you know, you walk through a door, and you are inside
the house. Suppose you have a system which says you must walk through this door a
hundred and one times before you enter into the house. Is it possible? So you step in,
step out, step in, step out, a hundred and one times, you count it, it is ridiculous, you
see. But why don't we succeed on the first occasion? Because we have lost the ability
to regulate our minds. And this we all know.

That is why Babuji used to say when he was asked, "Why do you ask for meditation
for one hour?", he said, "In the beginning, when we start meditation, it is possible that
you may not be able to really meditate, even for one minute in that one hour." And
progressively we are able to meditate, really meditate, for longer and longer times.
Because when we start, much time is wasted in adjusting ourselves to the situation,
trying to gain control over our own minds, putting it on the object of meditation and
keeping it there. You know, if you have seen old movies where we had carts drawn by
horses or bullocks, the man had to bring the cap out of the shed, go and rope the horses
one by one, yoke them to the cart and then start driving. This is our situation. First we
have to make the body comfortable; and very often you will find that people are not
able to do that even during the whole period of meditation. They are twisting and
turning and trying to find a comfortable position. After that, we have to start
marshaling the forces of the mind, the senses.

So if you think over these things, you will really appreciate that to meditate
properly takes a great deal of time. And it is only from the time that we really start
meditating that our progress begins. So that is the problem with meditation — that
while it holds out an enormous promise, it depends on us, how we do it. And therefore
the Master said, "Meditate every day." Because by doing it again and again, we
progressively increase our ability to take command of the situation.

So the practice becomes very important, you see. It is not only his teachings, it is
his practice. So meditate every day, and he has clarified it must be at the same time, in
the same place, because then the mind automatically becomes attuned to what it has to
do. So it is advisable to have these practices ordered and in a regulated manner.
Because then we automatically slip into meditation at the right time. You know, when
cows are being milked with machines, electrical machines, if they are not milked at
the right time, the milk starts dropping automatically. See, that is the value of
regularity. And the British used to say, they used to insist, that people come to work
shaven, clean shaven, you see. And you know the reason? Because the act of shaving
prepares you for the action of working. Because the first thing a lazy man abandons is
shaving. He says, you know, he does something like this [he rubs his cheek] and says,
"Okay, I think I'll shave tomorrow."

So you see these are rituals intended to put us into the right frame of mind for that
which we have to do. So having the same place, the same time saves us a great deal of
preliminary time in sitting down and starting meditation immediately. So, to that
extent, they are for our speedier progress.

Thank you.
 Marseilles, 13 July 1986 — Afternoon
This morning we touched upon the practice of Sahaj Marg, and especially the aspect
of meditation. I think that was enough as far as meditation is concerned, the main
explanation being about why we have to meditate for one hour, and why it has to be
regular.

The second thing concerns the cleaning, and I have already, I think, touched upon it
in the talk given yesterday morning. Because, as I have tried to explain to you, we
come into this world with our load of samskaras, which is our own creation. And that
is the capital we bring into this existence. It continues to guide our lives totally.
Though we enjoy a spurious or false sense of freedom (spurious can also be taken as a
limitation, you see), like you have a Sony recorder, if somebody makes another one
and puts on the Sony label, it is spurious. So whatever we may think about our own
freedom, we are not really free, and we can be free only when our samskaras are
erased, which is achieved by the cleaning process.

My Master once clarified the utmost importance of not continuing to form

samskaras. It should have been a very easy thing that we bring some samskaras into
this existence, and they are removed off by a graceful Master. But every time we think
something or do something, there is the possibility of creating another impression or a
samskaras. Therefore spiritual success, or success in spiritual life, does not depend
only on the meditation and the cleaning. If you are going to add on samskaras day by
day, the cleaning process becomes endless, and therefore the meditation cannot be
really effective.

The third and most important consideration is that the Master has to regulate his
own transmission because, as you all know, the transmission will only exaggerate
existing tendencies. Therefore purity is essential, before we can make the best use of
the transmission.

Now, during our seminars last year in 1985, considerable emphasis was given to
the thought on morality. At that time we had spoken about morality in a different way
as something by which we guide our conduct in this existence. Now why should it be
guided in that way? Because people are always prone to ask, "If I am happy now, why
should I change?" In fact I remember the first time in 1971, one prospective abhyasi
asked a question. She was a very prosperous European, a good life in every sense,
and she was really unable to understand why a human being should seek to change
one's existence or mode of existence, because in her opinion her life could not have
been better. So she said, "Why should I change? Why should I look for a better life
than this?" The answer was, "You are asking this question from a situation in which
you are now placed. That is from a position of prosperity, affluence, comfort, good
health. But imagine what it would be like when your circumstance is different." She
asked, "Why should I think about that?" But when she thought for herself that probably
less than one percent of the humanity has such a good life, and that in the next life she
could be born differently, depending on the circumstances or environment that she is
building up for herself in the future by her thoughts and action in this life, then she
understood the wisdom of planning for the future. Because spirituality in every sense
is planning for the future. It cannot be otherwise.

Our past has been fixed and done with, our present is what it is because of the past,
but it offers a fantastic opportunity in which we can plan for the future. No
businessman will plan to plan next year for next year's business. He plans today! In
fact, under modern business practice, we plan not only for the next year but for at least
the next five years to the very smallest possible detail: product-planning, market
strategy, finance, cash flows, everything. Modern business practice is nothing but
epitomizing this planning process. To which businessman is last year's profit useful or
interesting? It is finished!

So the future is what we all are thinking about and planning for, and the planning
involves two or three processes: reviewing past performance, not out of any guilt
complex or guilty feelings, but to see how our performance can be improved, and how
the mistakes of the past can be avoided. This is what we do in spirituality. The Master
says, "You live like this and this, and therefore you have such and such samskaras and
therefore you are what you are now. Now avoid all these things." He puts it in
different terms, He says, "Repent for the mistakes you have committed" — but as
Babuji pointed out, and it is very important to understand, repentance in Sahaj Marg is
not something like flagellation or lashing ourselves with thoughts of sin. Repentance
means making a resolution not to commit our mistakes again. So the idea of sin which
is so obnoxious to human beings, and the fear of punishment that always accompanies
a sense of guilt, are both avoided by the single positive action of deciding, "The past
is dead, but I resolve not to repeat those mistakes again."

Incidentally, if the businessmen made a similar resolution they would also be far
more successful. If you consider the phenomenon of weight, it is gravity which holds
us down. If you could just cut off gravity, even mountains could fly. What is so
wonderful about flight? Similarly, it is the weight of our past which is holding us
down. And I may say with absolute confidence that the cleaning aspect of Sahaj Marg
alone is sufficient to give us most of the blessings of spiritual practice, since ninety
percent of our deficiencies, of our drawbacks of the gravitational hold of samskaras is
released in one stroke.

This, I consider, is something unique to Sahaj Marg. Though the idea of cleaning is
not foreign to even religious systems, it has remained a superficial approach to
physical cleansing and, perhaps, to psychic cleaning process — to my knowledge
nothing more than that, nothing deeper than that. And therefore all temple rituals,
church rituals, have remained merely rituals. That is why when we go there and come
out, we don't feel a sense of either elation or lightness or joy, which almost without
exception every abhyasi feels after the cleaning process. I hope you have all
experienced this.

So that is the fantastic difference between the rituals of religion and the spiritual
cleaning process as given by my Master: this buoyancy, this feeling of lightness; and
that is why in a sense Babuji says, "We don't see light, but we feel light." And how
does this feeling of lightness come? Precisely because the weight of samskaras is
removed; I therefore repeat, it achieves ninety percent of what we have to achieve
under spiritual practice. Whenever we meet abhyasis anywhere in the world, and we
find that they are not progressing, almost invariably it is because they have not done
the cleaning.

Now Babuji Maharaj has said, if you receive transmission while your tendencies
are still active, only those tendencies will be strengthened. As he puts it very pithily,
"If you transmit to a thief, he will become a perfect thief." That is why I have always
felt that transmission without cleaning cannot achieve much, or at least it cannot
achieve much in the direction we want it to achieve. Therefore I have emphasized the
fundamental requirement, the most important requirement of our sadhanas, the
cleaning process. Therefore we also advise abhyasis: whenever you cannot meditate,
at least do the evening cleaning, because it keeps the vessel pure to receive the
transmission. So this is the very great benefit of the cleaning process, and whatever
else we may neglect, the cleaning should not be neglected under any circumstances.

When we come to the Prayer at bedtime, it is an important element, because by

practicing that aspect of our Sahaj Marg practice by which we repeat the Prayer a few
times mentally, and then meditate on the meaning of the Prayer, we find the Prayer
assuming, or revealing to us, different aspects of its meaning. It is not what it seems to
say. Very often the beginners ask the question, "When you say 'Oh Master!', who is this
person? Who is the Master? Because Babuji writes in Reality at Dawn, in Voice Real,
'God alone is the real Master.' Then you say, 'He is my Master, Babuji is my Master.'
You also say that he had his Master Lalaji. For heaven's sake, will you clear this
confusion?"

Now the easiest way of finding out what and who is the Master is this meditation
on the Prayer at night. It is not without purpose that it has been given to us as one
aspect of our practice. That it connects our consciousness at bed-time with the next
morning through the facet of sleep, it's okay. It's one of the aspects. That we go to bed
in a divine consciousness is another aspect. It helps us to have a relaxed sleep and
dream-free sleep, in fact, real sleep. But is that all?

I used to think so too, until the meditation on the Prayer revealed itself in many
ways. See, in India we use, what shall I say, an analogy. In the old days, that is fifty
years ago, it was the practice for a boy of ten or eight to marry a girl of three or four.
That was the practice in our society. It was a game. You see, it was as if a boy and a
girl, not yet ten years old, were playing at marriage. And many people have criticized
this, condemned this practice, as not only unlawful but inhuman. I also used to think
so. But many years later, when we see people of thirty and forty marrying, we find the
differences that surface. Because in child marriage, the biggest benefit is that the two
grow together from the time they are children. It begins almost like play, but ends with
a profound mutual respect and mutual love, which I can say with fairly good
confidence, is rare to find in modern marriages anywhere. It was precisely because
they grew into it from the time they were innocent children, you see. They could
understand each other, appreciate each other, tolerate each other. And when they grew
up sufficiently to know what love is, they sort of fell into love one day, you see, on a
substantial foundation of togetherness, built up over the previous ten, twelve years. So
it had its merits.

Now, what is the parallel with spirituality? Here also we have a man who claims
that he is in contact with the Ultimate. And he says, "By virtue of that contact that I
have achieved, I have the ability to put you in contact with the same Ultimate. So trust
me to a little extent and start this." So for almost all of us, this spiritual journey with
our Master begins as an association with a mere human being. That's all we see of him
in the beginning. A man from India, not very well educated, not very well cultured
according to our European standards, with strange dress habits and food habits, funny
mannerisms, but with all this, very endearing!

That is how Babuji came to Europe first, a very strange person. He had totally no
idea of what Europe is. For that matter, He did not know what even Bombay is. But
look at the fantastic value of his presence here. That when He came first in 1972, there
were perhaps eleven abhyasis or twelve in the whole of Europe. And today he is the
darling of Europe. Not only among the abhyasis, but among many who are still on the
peripheral fringes, thinking whether they should enter or not. Because it is a fact, that
whoever came into contact with him, whether they had accepted his practice or not,
whether they had accepted his message or not, whether they were prepared to enter his
spiritual method at all or not, none of them could avoid respecting him and loving him.

Now what was it that he had? No education, no wealth, no presence as we call it

— he was not like one of the big actors! He was very simple, unassuming, shy and
timid, and all of these were, as we think of them, negative attributes. Because you
know in Europe, we want tall, broad shouldered, aggressive, go-getters. But this man
had none of these. He had all the opposite virtues. Yet he captured the hearts of
everybody here.

You see, this is the mysterious adventure into which we enter, that if you make the
right decision in the beginning and accept him without judging him, with all his so-
called defects, as happens when a girl bride of four years accepts a boy groom of
eight years — innocently, knowing nothing of what it is all about, but with faith in the
future — then we understand and unfold this miraculous understanding of nature,
where that man with whom we associated, progressively becomes more and more
lovable, more and more adorable, until a day comes when we cannot exist without
him.

It is no longer a question of spirituality, it is no longer a question of what he can

give us — of the central region, of all this nonsense. He has become a vital part of our
existence. And this is not the only miracle. We find that we are also growing into that
very same thing that he is. By losing all our foolishness, all our false attractiveness,
false beauties, we learn to come into tune with nature, and then we find the miracle
that after a few years of practice, we are no longer mannequins in glass cases, but we
are living human beings, living vibrating human beings. So this is the transformation
— from dolls, of course walking, loving, laughing, screaming dolls — we become
very natural, lovable human beings again. And I have seen visible proof of this,
between 1972 and 1986.

Of course in 1972 when Master came first to Europe, there were couples
everywhere. But if you will pardon my saying it, they were just couples in all the
wrong possible ways. Only a casual opportunity linked them. Many of the couples are
still together today. But as Babuji used to say, "Those who have eyes can see that they
are different today." There is humanity between them, there is love between them,
there is respect between them, there is tolerance between them. And if you do not
mind my mentioning another fact, many of them are married also! I mean it, it's not a
laughing matter. Because as I explained in another talk, many of you may think that
marriage is just a piece of paper. But it shows a commitment to each other's welfare, a
commitment to respect each other and a commitment to love each other. Not only for a
day, or a week , or even a year; but as we used to read in children's stories, for ever
and ever after.

This is the miraculous transformation that my Master has worked in our society,
here in Europe. It is not a small thing. Because society has tried this, moral institutions
have tried it, legal institutions have tried it, the churches preaching fire, brimstone and
pitch, they have tried it. They didn't succeed. But I repeat, here came a person from
Shahjahanpur, strange and totally unknown to us, and in a brief decade transformed so
many people. Not only by giving them spiritual benefit, which of course he could give
without even coming here, but what is more important and more immediately needed
for us, as human beings, he brought back love and confidence into our lives. Because
without that we could not proceed further in spirituality.

So this is the greatest achievement I think he had, and if anything transcends his
achievements, it is our own achievement — that we were able to trust a man whom we
had never seen before, and in whom there was nothing that could make us trust in him!
So if ever people ask which is the greater of the two, the Master or the disciple? I
would not hesitate to answer, "It is the disciple." And it is not my answer, it is not
original! Because Master himself has said, "It is easy to find a master but
extraordinarily difficult to find a disciple." When I studied how all this became
possible, it was my rather humiliating discovery that it was not the practice, it was not
the teaching that develops us to this extent, but it was the Master as a person standing
before us, not only with humility and with a self-sacrificing attitude, but with
something that impressed us fantastically — I don't know if any of you have realized
what it is — it was his absolute confidence in his Master.

You know, when he came in 1972, he was already seventy-three years old. He
knew nothing in India. If you took him away (one mile away) from his house, he would
not know how to get back. It is literally true what I am saying. He did not know what a
telephone is. He did not know what a plane is, how you climb into it, how to come out
of it. He had no conception of money and all these formalities of passports, visas and
foreign travel. It was not only just foreign, but as if it was something imported from
Mars or Venus. And look at his enormous faith and courage in his Master, that not only
was he able to come out on a foreign journey for which he was totally unprepared
from every aspect, but he could also even bring a fellow like me to help him and to
assist him.

This is not any false humility. I know what I was. In fact, before I left Delhi I was
worried, what I would do if he fell sick. It was a real problem for me, because then
we had no contacts in Europe. As I told you, we had half a dozen or ten abhyasis, and
on that first tour I had to do everything for him. And if he had fallen sick I would have
been in a mess. Then, as if to reassure me, twenty-four hours before we left Delhi, he
introduced a thought into my head, and that thought was, "And suppose I fall sick in
Europe what will he do?" You see, that changed my whole attitude to the association
with my Master. Because while I was afraid of losing his passport, of his falling sick,
of his losing himself, his utter and total faith in his Master ensured that he had not only
no fear for himself, but no fear about me either. As far as I am concerned that is what
impressed me the most.

I did not think of him much in other ways. It is not a matter of disrespect. In fact, I
do not think of disrespect when I say this, and I don't intend it as a disrespect. He had
enormously human qualities: love, generosity, humor and wit, and an inflexible loyalty
to the abhyasis that he accepted. But to me all this was nothing. The paramount feature
of his character was his absolute, total faith in his Master. It was the bedrock of his
existence. Why do I say this? Because in some way I tried to convert my own
character into a similar faith in him. I must confess that it was not a great success.
Because looking at it very analytically, he had great benefits which I will never have.
And don't laugh when I say it. He was weak, I am strong. And it is not easy to create
dependence on somebody when you think you are strong.

He had very little education, I have a good education, according to Indian

standards. That breeds even more self-dependence and arrogance. In every way when
I compare myself with him, all these apparent benefits as a human being were really
defects. Because it was his weak health, his failing health, his comparative poverty,
his comparatively little education, these made faith not only inevitable but possible.

And that brings me to one of the big teachings of the Master. He once described
three necessities for one to be a saint. He said, "No person can be a saint unless he is
a little below par in health, has less than what he needs, and must have permanently
people to criticize him, revile him." It was a difficult thing to accept, because all our
life we are oriented towards better health, earning more than we need, and how to be
friendly with everybody and have everybody as our friends. His teaching was totally
against all these things. How to accept this? Because not only do our emotions and our
intellect rebel against these things, but in some way, it seems to be a decadent
philosophy. Then when I watched Master through a period of about ten to twelve
years, it came to me, it was revealed to me, that each of these three things has a
specific purpose in our development and our growth.
 His frequent ill-health made abhyasis more concerned for his welfare and health
and developed love in their hearts for him. I dare say that had he been six feet tall and
one hundred and ninety kilos, nobody would have loved him. His weakness and frailty
evoked love from us. Similarly his lack of material things, physical needs, opened our
hearts towards him even more. Everybody went to him with pullovers, shoes, caps,
what have you, you see. It opened our generosity, and we wanted to build an ashram
for him, and gave him generously our money. And when people criticized him, we
became very protective of him. You know how protective a mother becomes when her
child is criticized by somebody else. She is like a tigress! The same is with us. We
say, "How dare you talk about my Master like this?"

So it was a revelation to me to find that a Divine Master who could have been a
master in every sense, physical, emotional, material — he could have been a king of
kings — he had chosen voluntarily to accept a form, a circumstance, an environment
with all the physical sufferings and all other miseries that he had to undergo. With one
sole purpose: to make abhyasis' hearts capable of love, capable of charity, capable of
surrender. I think in the final analysis, this was his greatest sacrifice. And because of
that, it was his greatest achievement. To that we owe the progress we are able to
make.

So I would like to close this rather lengthy discourse on the Master with an effort to
recall to you his single requirement of spirituality a fundamental requirement —
through all necessary things, whether it be material things, habits, mental things: be
simple and in tune with nature, and cultivate the habits he cultivated and showed us.
Because, as he once told me himself from yet another example in his life, he never
meditated for more than two or three minutes at a time. He also told me that he rarely
did the cleaning. And he was often troubled in his conscience that he was not able to
do these things. But one day, he said, when he was going to brush his teeth — he was
walking to the well in his house, a matter of five meters — his heart was breaking
with an anguish to be like his Master and the thought came into his mind, "I must be
like my Master." It was not just a thought, it was an anguished cry from his heart,
backed by all the tremendous and profound love for his Master. And then Lalaji's
voice came, "You are like me now."

So, in the final analysis, it is not the practice, it is not meditation, it is not cleaning,
though of course they are all necessary. But it is not these that give us the final success.
They may give us petty things like liberation, childish things, but if we want that which
he got, we must create in ourselves that hunger, that longing, that absolute need, to love
him in such a way that we want to become like him. That alone can lead to that
success. I pray to my Master that he may bless all of us with that success.
Thank you very much.
 Talks in Paris
4 — 6 July 1986
 11
Obedience
Paris, 4 July 1986
Babuji used to work mostly at night and those who have gone to Shahjahanpur know
this very well. I used to think that he worked at night, because by day he was always
surrounded by abhyasis. He was with abhyasis from nine o'clock in the morning till
almost one o'clock at night, sometimes. Then after some years, I could see that he was
working in the day also, without the abhyasis knowing it. When he looked at us he was
transmitting. When he spoke to us he was transmitting. But yet, his most important
work was always at night between one and four, or five. And he explained to me that it
was because at that time the abhyasi is not aware of what is being done.

Now, this is a funny thing, because on one side we have to be aware, but it seems
also that we should not be aware. This brought about quite a bit of confusion. So I
once asked Master, "How to resolve this confusion?" Babuji told me, "We should be
aware of what is going on, because that improves our sensitivity." And he was also a
little troubled, because when we are aware that he is beginning to work, we are also
resisting it. And he said that my observation was correct. This is the main problem in
spiritual work. It seems almost that we should not be aware of what he is doing, but
we should be aware of how it is working on us. That is why he was compelled to
work at night, not because he did not want to sleep.

But then we sacrifice two things: we sacrifice the awareness of the work, and we
also sacrifice the awareness of what is going on inside us. So it would appear that
because of our egoistic resistance, we are losing two things, and both are related to
awareness. But Babuji was gracious enough to work at night, because whether we
knew it or not, we still benefited from his work. That was his greatness.

So we should now learn somehow to be conscious of his work and yet not resist it.
I think that was the main purpose of Babuji's visits to all of us so many times in so
many years. I once asked him, "Why is it necessary to do work which they should be
conscious of! Because you are in any case able to give them the benefit of the spiritual
work that you do at night." He told me, "You are right. But one very important element
is left out. That is, they don't know what they are receiving. That is number one. And
there is an even more important element that is missing. That is, unless they know that
the Master is giving them something, there is no reason for the relationship between
the Master and the disciple to develop." And a third most important thing, according to
Babuji, is that unless there is a relationship between the Master and the disciple, love
cannot develop. And without that love, the highest spiritual level cannot be attained.

So the work of the Master has two aspects: the spiritual work which he can do and
which he does at night without our knowing it, which gives us, I think, more than
eighty per cent of the benefit that we derive, and which takes, for him, only probably
five percent of the effort. And the other ninety-five per cent of the work is with us
during the day time, consciously, with our awareness; which work, from our aspect, is
more important for us. Because that is what makes it possible for us to develop love
for the Master and become one with him.

So the important thing to realize is that it is not enough to have spiritual benefit
alone. Of course, it has its place. But it is like primary education for children, you see.
And that gift the Master gives us, whether we want it or not. But if an abhyasi wants to
become like the Master and become one with him, which is the highest goal of
spiritual practice, then this day time exposure to, and association with the Master, his
work, becomes most important. So, that is why he had to travel all his life to centres
all over the world. And that is why it becomes important that we, as abhyasis, co-
operate with him fully in this aspect of his work.

There is only one way in which we can really co-operate. What is it that obstructs
his work when we are conscious of his work? Our wishes, our desires, our ego. So
the wishes and desires, that is what we say in the prayer, you see, they are putting bar
to our advancement. But when we realize that our desires, wishes, also come from the
ego, then we realize that we have to surrender the ego itself to the Master, and the only
way to begin this process of surrendering is to obey.

In our old yogic literature it is said that we should do what the guru says, and that is
the beginning and end of spiritual practice. So if anything will guarantee total success
in spiritual life, it is obedience. Because obedience means that we don't think of what
he asks us to do, we do it. So, only one who has more or less given up the egoistic
attitude can obey the Master.

So I would advise, I would request all of you to practice this obedience very
seriously. And where to begin? With the Ten Maxims of Sahaj Marg. There is no use
in saying, "Oh, we are in Europe, this is not possible, that is not possible." That is not
obedience, you see. Anybody can obey that which is possible to obey. The test of
obedience is: are we obedient when we cannot possibly obey?

It is like love. Everybody can love that which is lovable. That is why it is so easy
to love children, especially babies, you see. They are so lovable. Who will not love a
baby? But when the baby becomes older, and becomes an adult, somehow that adult
seems to lose lovable qualities. That is what we think. But if your love is constant,
you must love whatever be the change in the beloved. Isn't it? So, similarly, we love
the Master. We all say: "We love the Master." Then we must love everything that he
tells us to do, and that is the real obedience. So love for the Master must be reflected
in obedience.

Therefore, I say that without love obedience also is not possible. Because this is
not a military type of obedience, you see. There we obey because otherwise we are
likely to be punished. That is why there is so much resistance to rules and regulations.
It is not that we don't want to obey and follow these rules and regulations, but we
question the right of someone, or some agency, to punish us if we disobey. So,
whenever in a society we find resistance to rules and regulations, it is the fear of
punishment, and behind it is our questioning the right of the other person to punish us,
and that must be based on fear, you see.

So, especially in countries where they talk too much about liberty and things like
that, it is my feeling that there is fear behind all this. And that is why Babuji said, "The
real freedom is freedom from freedom." Because whenever we are conscious of
freedom, we are really conscious of the previous bondage from which we are free.
Now in a situation, or an association, where love is the cause of the association, there
should be no fear, because love and fear cannot coexist.

Then what is the problem with obedience? Because we know that if we don't obey,
there is no punishment at all, whereas obedience gives us the highest goal of human
life. So, is it not sensible to obey the Master? So, I think obedience of the Master
really shows that we are very sensible and that we also love the Master. Now we are
only sensible, but I am always, what should I say, inclined to equate obedience with
love. And increasing love must be reflected in increasing obedience. And when that
love is absolute, obedience must be absolute.

So, I always judge an abhyasi's love for the Master by the degree of obedience that
is visible to us. To me it is a direct relationship: obedience — love; more obedience
— more love; highest obedience — highest love. And how is this possible? Because
people can say, "But I have not the capacity to obey." It is a very great secret but a
very small thing. Because, when you love a person totally, you are constantly
remembering that person. And obedience in his remembrance, in the remembrance of
the Master, gives us his powers, therefore we work with his powers. Therefore, when
we are loving the Master and we are remembering him all the time, we use his
powers; whereas when we are not remembering him and loving him, we use our
powers, and therefore we fail. And when we don't remember the Master, because we
don't love him, we are dependent on our own capacities, and naturally we fail. So, this
is the great secret of obedience.

It is not easy to love, but it's easy to obey. And it is my experience that if you just
obey and go on and on, it is easier than trying to love somebody. So my advice to all
abhyasis is, please become obedient, don't think of what is possible or what is
impossible for us, because even in any small work, if you start with a doubt it is
impossible. As Babuji said, "Doubt poisons the will." You know, if I have to lift this
chair and I say, "Oh, can I lift it?", I cannot lift it. But if you take it up with confidence
then automatically your power will work, and you will be able to lift it.

So, we should begin with a positive attitude to obedience. If the Master says, "Get
up at dawn," we should try it, you see. But people ask, "What should I do after five
o'clock if I get up? I have nothing to do." Well, try to find something to do, meditate!
There is enough to do in the morning, you see. But in Europe everybody gets up late.
Why? Because we sleep late. Why? Because we go to parties or with friends. Why?
Because that is social life. There is no end to that, you see. So I ask one question. "Do
you want spiritual life because all of the Europeans want spiritual life?" "No, no, how
is it possible?" Well, then you don't want to do everything that all of the Europeans do.
Isn't it? So you want something which all Europeans don't want, then you must do
something which all Europeans don't do. So when it comes to wanting something we
are prepared to be non-Europeans, but when we have to do something to get it, we are
Europeans.

This attitude of duality must be dropped, because spirituality is not European or

Indian, or Chinese, or American. It is divine. And when the Master says, "This is
available, and this and this you must do," we have to do it. There is no compulsion,
you see. The Master says, "If you want this, then you must do this." It is a very
common thing. If I want to eat boiled potatoes, I have to light the stove, boil the water,
put in the potatoes, and boil them. If you say, "But Chari, we are in a free society, I
don't want to do all this," then eat raw potatoes. Why I am saying this is, obedience is
not for the sake of the Master, it is for the sake of yourself. You know, like we obey so
many things, "Don't smoke near a petrol station," because if the fire bursts there, you
will also die with it.

So, all obedience is for the sake of the self. Here also, it is for your sake that you
are obedient. Therefore, you practice for your own development; you have to develop
obedience to make that practice effective, for your own development; that develops
love for the Master to take you to the highest state of development. And one day that
will take you to the Master and make you one with him, again for your sake.

So, I would like to close this small talk by saying that it is only in the field of
spirituality that obedience gives total benefit. In ordinary rules and regulations,
obedience prevents accidents, saves lives, you see, something like that. It's a
preventive thing. "Don't smoke in a petrol station." Well! I only prevent a fire. I don't
get anything positive out of it. "Don't cross the road when the red light is on." I only
avoid an accident. "Don't swim in the river when the water is polluted." Again it is an
avoidance of an accident. "Don't look out of the window from a train." Again you save
your head from accident ...all negative benefits.

In the field of spirituality obedience gives positive results, positive benefits. So, I
recommend obedience as a start. And try to begin with the Ten Maxims, any one of
them, it doesn't matter. It is not necessary to begin with number one, and then go to
number two. Start anywhere. In obedience, the most important thing to remember is:
don't think, start doing.

Thank you.
 12
Religion and Spirituality
Paris, 5 July 1986
My Master used to say that we should practice first, and then try to understand,
because the practice itself gives the necessary understanding of what we are doing.
But it is one of the fallacies of our human intellect that we seek to understand before
we do something, and this is especially true of spirituality. Master used to say all
knowledge comes by doing something and then writing about it — even scientific
knowledge!

Nowadays. there is a mistaken notion that science teaches first and then you
practice, but that's not correct. It was always an idea that started first that there is
something, then the mind went into the thing, and the conclusions of the mind were
proved in the physical world by experiment. Always there was a thought that there is
something, and then the mind thinks about it, meditates on it, realizes some truth, and
then experiment is used to confirm it. So experiments only confirm what the intuition
already teaches us. So to try to have knowledge first, and then to go on to practice is
like putting the cart before the horse. It is for this reason that even in our schools we
have some experiments in science, but all students know that they learn from the books
first and then practice the experiment to prove that it is right.

If you come to the field of spirituality — what are we trying to prove here by our
experience that a God exists? Because the intuition tells us that nothing comes from
nothing. Therefore if all this vast universe with its mysteries, with its wonders, with
its marvels exists, there must be some beginning, some cause for it. Now some people
call it the primal cause; some call it the original cause; some call it God! In Sahaj
Marg we call it 'the Centre'. That's a very nice way of calling it, addressing it, because
it has two, three purposes.

The first idea is that when we talk of a God, we always imagine him in some way
as an anthropomorphic God. It is inevitable. Man cannot possibly accept that God can
be a buffalo or a fish. That is why in the Eastern tradition you find God as an immense
figure with more hands, more legs, more eyes than the ordinary human being. That is,
he is a super-human figure with super-human powers. When we call the cause 'the
Centre', this idea is removed.

The second idea is that if we have a God, then we have the various religions which
say, "My God is superior to your God," and we have the most unfortunate tragedy of
religious wars killing millions of people. And the tragedy is made much worse and
more foolish when we think that all religions say that there can be only one God. And
therefore, if religion says, "My God is superior to your God," they are talking
nonsense. And this is unfortunately made worse because we come to religion with
emotions, and religion has played upon these emotions to put one kind of person
against another kind, and therefore humanity has been divided by religions. When we
say 'the Centre', this problem cannot arise. Therefore we claim that spirituality unites,
whereas religions divide human beings.

A third important factor is that when you say, 'God', some imagine him somewhere
far away in some heaven, whereas all mysticism, all mystic approaches, say, "He is
inside us." When we say 'the Centre', this problem also is lost. So these are three very
important reasons why my Master says 'Centre', and not 'God'.

Another point which can be considered as logical is that when we think of a centre,
we think of everything as coming or radiating from that centre. When we say "God,"
we think of him as giving us something. Therefore we become selfish, we become
beggars; but when we talk of a centre which radiates from it, there is nothing to ask,
we have only to receive what it gives, what it radiates. Another reason - when you
think of a God, he can be kind, he can be just, he can be cruel, he can be merciful,
these are our ideas of God, you see. Because making him into an anthropomorphic
God, we think of him as having human emotions, human loves and hates. Therefore we
call him kind when he gives to us; we call him cruel when he denies us, as we think.

Now, if it is 'the Centre', such a problem cannot arise. For example, it's like the sun
which is the centre of our solar system. It radiates its light and heat; it has no love or
hate; it has no favoritism; it has no friends and enemies. It radiates because that is its
function. We can say it is its existence. By its existence it makes the solar system
illuminated, and also heats up everything, let us say, by that fact. Now all that is
necessary for us to receive its benefits is to present ourselves before it. We don't have
to ask, we don't have to pray, we don't have to beg. We only have to expose ourselves.
That is what we do in meditation. We imagine that there is a divine being who has
come from the Centre as the Master, and we present ourselves before Him. The Divine
has descended in a human form as the Master. That is all that is necessary.

Many people say, "Oh, you know, this master may be like this, that master may be
like that, will he like us, will he give to us?" In religion this is possible, because
religious priests may have likes and dislikes. Most religions will accept only people
from their own religion into their places of worship. That is why even in the Old
Testament you have the idea of a jealous God, an angry God, a vengeful God, and this
exists in all religions.

This my Master has said very beautifully, when he said that religions employ two
instruments: fear and temptation. In spirituality there is neither fear nor temptation.
The sun does not say, "If you don't come before me, you will feel cold." When we are
away from it, we feel cold, and we go out and stand before the sun.

I remember one story which I read when I was in school many years ago, which
deals with the power of power. It seems that the sun, the rain and the wind, they all
started arguing, "Who is the most powerful?" And each claimed it was the most
powerful. Then they said, "Let us have a test." One old man was going with a lot of
coats and overcoats, and they said, "We shall try to remove his clothes from him, by
our powers." So the rain was coming in gusts, and then it came in a storm, and soaking
him; but the more it rained, the more clothes he put on. It accepted failure. Then the
wind said, "Ah! Ah! Now I will try." It started blowing, first as a gentle breeze, then
as a little wind; but the stronger it blew, the more this fellow tightened his dress and
coat. The wind had to accept defeat. Then out came the sun. As it started rising and
becoming hotter and hotter, first he took off his overcoat, then his coat, then his
pullover. You can judge what happened, you see. We can see it in summer here also —
bathing suits.

So that is the idea of using one's essence to make us stand naked before the
presence — stand naked in its presence. There is no demand, there is no compulsion,
but by being itself in a more and more vital way, it makes us unconsciously become
naked before it.

So my Master used to say that is the power of love! The more you love, the more
you must disarm the beloved — remove the aims, you know, protective devices. So
that is the secret power of love which we use in spirituality. Therefore when the
Master sits before you, he loves in a universal way. He offers nothing, He promises
nothing, because to do so would be to utilise the power of temptation. He does not
threaten anything, He does not give any rules and regulations, because then that would
be using the power of fear. So all that we can say of the Master is, "He is present. He
is." What can he do for us? Well we have to find out by sitting before him.

Therefore in Sahaj Marg, my Master always used to say, "The abhyasi is the proof
of the system. If he gets and he feels he has got, or she has got, that is the proof."
Incidentally, this is true of everything. Suppose you make something which you think is
very good, a soup for instance, the person who eats it must say it is good. It's no use
the cook saying it is very good, you see. Isn't it? Therefore, shops, restaurants, they
have to depend on the reputation that they build up as good organisations, good
institutions. That is, reputation is built up by performance, you see, not by mere
claims.

Now religions get away with the whole thing by tempting us and by frightening us;
by tempting us, and by making us afraid. So in a sense, a religious devotee really has
no time to think about whether he is receiving anything at all, because most religions
reinforce their own power by saying that if you think you have not got something, it
shows a lack of faith, and you shall be doubly punished! Therefore people know they
have got nothing, but they are afraid to say, even to themselves, that they have got
nothing.

In spirituality we have nothing but the truth, the whole truth. Because the Master
exists, we sit before him, we receive or do not receive, as we experience it among
ourselves, by our growth. And like when you put clothes out to dry, it takes half an
hour, one hour, two hours, depending on how wet the cloth is. Similarly depending on
our level of grossness, a certain time is taken, before we can know what we are
getting. Therefore it is necessary to have patience until we are relatively dry in his
presence, that is, so that we are at least relatively clean. I was using the word 'dry'
because of the cloth, you see. It is like a window pane. If it is very dirty you cannot
see through it. It does not mean there is no light outside. So we have to clean it until it
allows the light to come inside. This cleaning, too, is largely done by the Master.

Therefore, as I say again, it takes time. How much time? We cannot possibly
answer because if a saint comes and sits before the Master, he will be instantly
transformed into even higher levels. So how much time each one of us will take
depends on how much grossness we bring with us when we come to the Master.

So this is a brief difference between what religion says and preaches and practices,
and what spirituality does. I would go farther and say spirituality does not do anything.
It is what we do with spirituality that matters. So when we have such meetings and
invite people to come, it is to invite you to try and see what you can do with
spirituality. So what spirituality achieves in your hands is a proof of your worth.
Under no circumstances can it be a comment on what spirituality itself is, what it can
do. Therefore, please don't judge spirituality as such, because it is a judgement on
yourselves that you are making when you enter into spiritual practice. It is like a man
who is dirty after traveling, recognizes he is dirty and has a shower. What can the
water do? You come out and see for yourself after you have had your bath.

So I request all of you to bear this in mind, that neither the Master nor the spiritual
values of whatever he may be, or is, can be judged by us, except by what we are able
to use it for upon ourselves. And this is also the very simplest piece of understanding;
because you put a stone in water, it will not dissolve; but if you put salt or sugar, it
dissolves almost instantly. It is neither the blame of the water that it could not dissolve
the stone, nor the credit of the water that it dissolves the sugar and the salt. The credit
or blame belongs to that which is put into the water.

So in spiritual practice, our success, our failure is our credit or blame. It has
nothing to do with the system or the Master. So, once again, I would like you to think
over this and undertake this practice with as much enthusiasm and discipline as you
possibly can, and to see for yourselves what you can become by this practice.

Thank you.
 13
Spiritual Love
Paris, 6 July 1986 — morning
Once I asked Babuji whether love is really necessary for spiritual progress. He gave
me a rather funny answer. He said, "Only one who has loved the Master can answer
that question." Now, it is well known that if you want to know about love, ask a lover.
And can love ever be complete'? Because some people ask, "How to love the Master
completely? Is it ever possible?"

In one way Babuji has answered that question in one of his books, where he says
that when Lalaji attained mahasamadhi, he did not know about it until he got the
telegram. And then he himself makes a comment on his own love for his Master and
seems to suggest that had he loved his Master, he should have known when Lalaji
passed away. Now, this is a very surprising statement from the Master.

If you see the case histories in some of the psychic books, in psychic journals, like,
for instance, the Journal of the Society for Psychic Research in England, many
instances have been documented where, for example, a father who was dying on a
ship, thousands of miles away, appears to the son somewhere on a farm and, later on,
the son gets the news of his father's death. He seems to have somehow managed to
communicate at the moment of death.

There have been many such instances of ordinary human beings having such an
intense association with another person. The proof is this last minute communication
of the dying with the living. Now, what is the problem with Babuji and Lalaji that
there was no such, shall we say, 'communication' or even the knowledge of Lalaji's
passing away in the mind of the Master'?

It raises a very profound question of what love is, and what its role in our existence
is. I do not know whether I should just allow you all to think about this, because it is a
very important thing and should be correctly understood. It is my suggestion that when
you have loved a person at the very innermost core of existence, the physical
disappearance of that person has no meaning. Because, to the lover, the beloved is
still alive, very much alive. So how could Babuji ever have had an intimation that
Lalaji had, as we say in the normal way, died?

So that is the secret of Babuji's love for his Master. Because, had he been
conscious of Lalaji's passing away, I would say that it was a lesser form of love for
his Master. The proof is that throughout his life he said Lalaji was with him. He used
to question him; he used to ask for advice from him. Therefore, that is the proof that,
for Babuji, the figure and form of Lalaji, his physical existence, had no meaning. That
is the type of love we should speak about when we talk about love in spirituality.

It is, however, a limitation of the human emotion and intellect that we can only start
with love, as we know it, at the human level. Then we suffer because we are
dependent on the form, we are dependent on the name, and things like that. But it is
precisely that dependence that we have to give up. And this giving up is taught to us by
meditating on something which is formless in the heart — divine light, to begin with.
So, we have to love a physical Master, and it is a moot question whether that love can
begin or is already existing; whether that love exists already, or has to be developed.
Because it is of the nature of love that it seeks something. What does it seek? It seeks
the beloved. So when there is a search for something, there must be love backing that
search. So, however much we may wander in our search, this fact cannot be denied
that love is behind it.

So this is just to answer one or two questions that were put this morning: that
without love, you could not have even searched for a way. And it is my feeling that
love is part of human nature. It is what distinguishes human nature from, for instance,
what we call animal nature. Animals don't have love as we understand it. Now I am
not talking of romantic love, as you understand it in the West. I am talking of love as
humans feel it everywhere. That love does not exist in animals, where the relationship
between a mother and its own offspring is a matter of instinct.

I used to wonder why love becomes necessary at the human level, because nature
has in some way brought love into the picture at this level of existence. And I got the
answer only some years after I came to the feet of my Master, Babuji. And the secret
was dependence! It is a well-known fact that in the animal kingdom the baby that is
born is almost instantly capable of looking after itself, whereas the human being is
totally dependent at birth. And perhaps it is this dependence of the child that had to be
protected and allowed to grow into an adult, and the divine benevolence that we call
nature somehow planned for it by making first maternal love a part of human
existence. It is part of the nature of the mother, of the female. And it is my humble
suggestion that without mothers humanity would collapse in one generation.

Of course this can only be a speculative idea, but it is my conviction, personally,

that when human beings evolved, they evolved with love, so that love could further
our existence in so many ways. So, to my mind, the greatest distinction between the
animal kingdom and the human kingdom is the existence of love. Other things are there
of course, that they don't have intellect, will; we have the intellect and the will. But, in
some way, it is love which gives direction to both our intellectual and our moral
efforts. It is like the gyroscope which guides a plane, for instance, or a beam which
guides it. So that is why, perhaps, so much stress is laid upon love in spiritual
disciplines. As we discussed elsewhere, authoritarian discipline is easy to enforce but
difficult to uphold, whereas discipline growing out of love is self-maintained, self-
created. We are not disciplined by the outside, but we become disciplined ourselves.
We accept it as a necessity with which to guide our lives.

So love, as a typical human value, as a distinctive human emotion, is not something

that we use, it is something without which we cannot exist. Now, all that we do in
spirituality is to widen the scope of that love. The capacity for love exists. It is
directed at one or two persons. Spirituality says that, like everything else, it is not for
you and your wife or for your daughters and sons alone. Enlarge it, widen it, make it
universal. So that, to my mind, is the function of human existence. And all this talk of
goals and God realisation is nothing else but learning to become love yourself.

So, in a certain sense, we have the animal kingdom without love, we have the
human kingdom with love, but with a limited capacity to express it; and then we have
the spiritual kingdom where the human being who could love in a very, very limited
and self-centreed sense, becomes capable of loving without limit until, in some
mysterious way of transformation, that human being becomes love. He or she no longer
'loves' as a verb. He or she is love.

This is the sort of transformation that we see going on all around us in nature. For
instance, astronomy tells us that the clouds of interstellar dust coalesce by the forces
of gravity, become denser and denser until it becomes a sun, so that that which was
dark, and which was obstructing light, by co-operating with the forces of gravitation
— no doubt in a mindless way without any will to do so — becomes transformed into
a glorious manifestation of light, becoming light itself. Then you will find the second
miracle; that the very same dust particles, which would have been destroyed by fire in
a second, now become the sun, which can burn for millions of years and give light. So,
in nature, we have this transformation going on at several levels.

Now, what is the force of gravitation that we have to use to sort of canalize this
love, to make ourselves into suns? It is regulation of the mind, instead of allowing it to
sort of fizzle out in unnecessary activities, in multifarious channels. This is the
discipline that we follow in raja yoga, essentially in Sahaj Marg. That is why in yogic
literature we find the example of the tortoise, which pulls in all its limbs into itself.
Sometimes this has been misinterpreted as signifying ascetic practices; but where
ascetic practices are enforced by an external discipline, it fails, because the mind
does not co-operate. It is almost impossible to have the mind in one direction and the
physical tendencies in another direction. And recognizing the fact that the mind is what
originates physical activity, raja yoga guides the mental tendencies into one stream,
and that is the object of meditation.

So this is the secret of human transformation — that we begin, because we are

human beings, with a certain ability to love, a capacity to love. Initially we scatter this
love in all directions, foolishly, and suffer for it. If the love makes a search for
something really of eternal value or eternal verity, as we call it, then the scattering of
this love progressively decreases, until it becomes focused on one object. This
process we sometimes call renunciation, but it is wrong. Renunciation must result out
of a positive acceptance of one channel for our love. And that is, as the Master has
said, "Things drop off which are unnecessary." We cannot claim to have renounced
them. So this is how the capacity to love the Master develops. It is not the love itself
which can possibly develop, because, as Rako said, "It exists, or it does not exist." I
believe that in human beings it cannot possibly not exist. Because then we would be
that demon of horror, a creation of the scientific laboratories, without a heart.

So we start with love, we fritter it in all directions. but in the human being there is
always the struggle to evolve which is working behind us, whether we are willing to
recognize it or not, whether we are willing to even accept it or not. It is a force which
cannot be denied under any circumstances. So, earlier if you are wise, later if you are
less wise, it does take control one day. Then commences the search for a direction,
and that is precisely the moment when our growth begins. Then all the fissiparous
tendencies of love become, one by one, attached to the mainstream of love, and we
find a Master whom we are able to love.

There are still struggles, because there are still duties to be performed, persons to
be loved, as we think, and that is now part of the struggle on the path. So, there is a big
difference between roaming around in the darkness without knowing the way and then
struggling on the path with the Master to guide us. Now we are in very capable hands.
And if we only keep Him in front of us and follow Him, problems drop off more and
more until He is there as the only person in our gaze, in our vision, and there is nothing
else to love before us. So, when can we love the Master absolutely? When, in our
existence, He is the only being who is in front of us.

Still, the duality of Him and me exists, but it no longer matters because, in a sense,
there is a great deal of fun in having somebody to love, even if it is only the Master.
And that is the final tragedy, you see, thinking from a human level, that at a moment in
time that figure must disappear. Because it is the greatest act of negation of reality, and
a negation of truth and a negation of divinity itself if our love needs a personal figure
for its existence. So at that stage it is the final transcendence of all limitations, and that
is the stage when the Master becomes a Master. Because now, having no lamp in front
of him to guide him, He becomes a lamp himself.

So this is what I believe to be the course of love in spiritual life. It depends on

each one of us and our dedication to the truth, how well we fulfill our obligations to
ourselves, to our personal evolution, whether this journey is ever completed or not.
But nature will not let us go so easily. As J.M. Piquemal said, it is a trap. Life is a
trap. But it is an educational trap. It is a refining trap. We are put into it to make us
find the way out of it.

And it is a very simple thing, if you understand the secret behind it. Because if we
will only think how we came into this trap of human existence, we will find out that
there are two answers to that question. We must have died somewhere else to come
here. That is the door into this life. Find that same door, which is death. This Master
beautifully says, "Die before you die." So death is one of the doors out of that trap. But
it must be the right way of dying. I repeat, we must die before we die. Then what is
known in science as a humanoid comes into the trap, and a saint goes out of it. If we
live and die only in the natural way as we are all living and dying, then there is no
door opening out of the trap. It is another door leading back into the trap again. This is
the circle of birth and death.

What is the second way? In whatever circumstances we are conceived, a human

being is born out of human intercourse part of the Divine plan and Love that brings us
into existence. So in some way we are here because of love. So the way out must also
be through love. So love and death are, to my mind, two ways of escape out of this
trap that we call existence. And those who have followed Sahaj Marg properly, who
have followed the Master's teachings properly, will find that it is this love which
leads to death, or to dying before we die. Because at a moment in our love lives for
the Master — it is very definitely a love life — we cease to exist and only he exists,
so that love makes us die before we die. So, essentially, it is one way.

This is my understanding of spiritual love, what little I have learned at the feet of
my Master and what I have experienced in my own sadhana. Whether it is true, it is for
each one of you to prove in your lives.

Thank you.
 14
Living Death
Paris, 6 July 1986 — afternoon
Q: Could you tell us how the process of death, or I could say of dying, takes place?
What happens at that time?

PR: Which death is he referring to?

Q: To the physical death.

PR: I don't know. [laughter] In India, we have a saying that to know what happens at
death, you must die once. [laughter] That is why, as I said this morning, the saints have
full knowledge of death, because they die before they die. That is what Babuji calls a
living death. So, we must be alive after we are dead before we can know what death
is, isn't it? If we are dead finally, we cannot know anything about it. That is why we
have been denied a knowledge of death even though, according to tradition, we have
been born and have died so many times. That is what our Indian philosophy says: "We
die without gaining a knowledge of death." And anything which we do without gaining
a knowledge about it is a wasted experience. So, in that sense, all our previous deaths
have been wasteful deaths, useless deaths. So, now we should try to die usefully, that
is, gainfully, because it is common sense knowledge that we overcome that about
which we have full knowledge, and when we can know all about death while we are
still alive, then death has no longer any power over us. That is the condition of living
death of Sahaj Marg. So, that is the answer.

Today someone, I think it was Nicolas, was talking about a book about people who
are almost dead. It gives experiences of so many people who are unconscious,
clinically dead, but who somehow came back. According to them death is in four
stages, and the last stage is the one where they see brilliant lights, it's filled with
happiness, filled with joy, so much so that when they come back alive again, they are
very unhappy about it. They blame the doctors for bringing them back and even ask,
"Why did you bring me back? It was so wonderful there." But that is only a taste. I
should say it is an accidental experience. And if an accidental experience can give us
so much bliss, what must be the real thing!

So, all this fear of death, questions of death, it is because of our identification with
the body. And the life of the body is something which wants to keep us here, whereas
the soul wishes to go back from where it came. That is why, often, in the spiritual life
at a certain stage there is a great deal of tension, because one half is diverted here, and
one half is diverted there, and one is pulled from the lower self, and one is pulled
from the higher self. It creates havoc. And that is when, if the guru's grace is not
present with us, it is easy to fall back into this physical existence. I mean while we are
alive here, not after death. And if this happens a few times, then we lose the ability to
go up. So, like in airplanes, you have this point of no return. We must also cross the
point of no return on our spiritual journey, and then we are safe. So, it is all the
Master's grace that He sees we are across that border.

Of course, that does not mean that tensions cease. I personally believe that there
will always be some tension as long as we are physically present here. That is why
saints are in a hurry to get away. On one side there is the tremendous longing to go
back home, and on the other side there is this great humility of theirs which recognizes
the unnecessary dangers in being present here in the physical life.

I read in a biography of Vivekananda, for instance, that when someone praised him
for his qualities, he confessed that he was afraid of each day because, while it is a day
full of opportunity for advancement, it is also a day full of opportunity for fall. That is
why many people have called the spiritual path 'the razor's edge'.

In Sahaj Marg we don't have to be afraid about it, because so long as we are
sincere, we are honest in our pursuit, our Master looks after us. But that was not the
case with all the systems, you see. I think that is one reason why people had to run
away to jungles and forests to minimize the pull of the worldly attractions. It is the
greatness of the Master of Sahaj Marg, my Master, that a system is available which we
can practice while living in this existence in our normal way and, in a sense, it can be
only practiced like that, because life has to be lived and transcended.

Every psychologist knows that you cannot transcend anything from which you run
away. Of course, the people in the West should not misunderstand this as having to
face challenges by deliberately seeking out dangerous things. Trying daily to find a
new danger to face is as stupid as running away from danger. So, the so-called spirit
of adventure, you know, I don't have much respect for it, because it is also under the
compulsion of fear, though it is only a change in the reaction. One man tries to run
away from that which he is afraid of, another man tries to physically overcome it. And
both lose.

So the way is to live without either being afraid, or without having to face
challenges, you see. That is the naturalness of Sahaj Marg — that we seek to live life
in a natural way in the environment in which we are put, and accept that which comes
to us, transcending it as it comes. In a sense, it is like going up a staircase full of steps.
We climb up one step to be faced with another. We go on climbing, up and up and up.
There is neither revulsion nor anger, nor a feeling that it is something nice to climb
stairs because it develops our leg muscles.

I am saying this because we should recognize one very important fact: such
physical, mental, intellectual equipment as we are born with is given to us to cross
what we call the ocean of existence. They must all be developed to such capacity as it
is necessary for them to be used by us intelligently. Excessive development of any of
them is an absurd waste of energy. I would like you all to deeply think over this,
because the West is so dependent on its physical perfections, its intellectual greatness.
But if you look into it, it's all really very, very childish.

But, unfortunately, the moral perfection is lost, and most people don't know what
spirituality is, or whether it even exists. It's like a carpenter who is eternally
sharpening his tools, but doing nothing more than that. What is the use of sharp tools, if
they are not going to be used for some purpose? All that we can do is to exhibit them
to everybody who comes, and this is what we are doing — exhibiting our bodies,
exhibiting our intelligence. So, we have a lot of things to show which are useless. But,
spirituality says, develop that which can only be seen by another developed person;
and that is what we are trying to do here in our spiritual efforts in Sahaj Marg.

And, if I may add one piece of advice: even love should be like that, unseen. All
this ostentatious, exhibitionistic love — to whom are we trying to prove that we love
someone? All this exhibitionism, at best it is ridiculous, and at worst it is obscene.
Excuse me for making this remark, but it is true. Because love is such a super-fine
thing and such a transcendental thing. I spoke about it this morning. It is common to all
humans. If it is common to everyone, what is the need for us to show it and flaunt it in
front of everybody else? And at the highest level it is so sacred that it is something
between the lover and the beloved. A third person has no reason, no business to know
about it.

You see, it is not shame of love that keeps love hidden in the East, it is its
sacredness. And in the West — you may think about it, why it is so open and so
flaunted about in public! So in that sense, all sacred things have to be protected. They
cannot stand public gaze. So please remember that love is a very, very sacred thing, it
is not profane, it should not be made profane. And the less it is expressed openly, the
more it grows internally. So, one who wishes to develop love should avoid all
expression of it, because only then it grows and grows. So, this is another secret. It's
not a secret, I think everybody knows about it.
 And if one loves, and there is a beloved to be loved, surely the beloved knows all
about it and doesn't have to be told every few minutes that he is loved or she is loved.
If you have money in your pocket do you go around saying, "I have money, I have
money, I have money."? Then, why have we to speak about love, "I love you, I love
you."? What for?

So, please think about it. I know it is a little difficult, and sometimes people also
get annoyed, you see! But this is not a criticism, when we are here to learn from the
Master, and when Babuji has said that at the highest level you cannot even know
whether you love or not, that is, consciousness that you love your beloved should also
go. It is such a fine, super-fine thing, you see, that as my Master has said, "If you know
you love, that is itself a desecration of love." You see, that knowledge somehow
depreciates the value of true love.

So, when all of you are so interested in knowing how to love and how to develop
love, we should understand these spiritual truths and try to realize, with the heart, that
there is no such thing as Eastern love and Western love. Love is human. At the human
level it is expressed in many profane ways; but when we want to become divinized,
the love must become divinized with us. Otherwise the whole exercise is a futile
waste of time. So it is necessary to first understand it and then to practice it.

And it is necessary that all our abhyasis, brothers and sisters, should try to bring
these principles into their lives. And let me give you one assurance in this matter. If
you have the courage and the faith to practice these things, you will find that there are
immense returns by way of increased love in your lives, not a decrease. This is
absolutely an assurance you can have, because one of the reasons for all this stupid
love, what I call roadside love, is the fear that if we don't indulge in these things, we
may lose out on our love lives. But all those who have given in to this sort of thinking
will surely accept in their hearts, that if they got anything out of it, it was only a guilty
feeling — not pleasure, not love, nothing like that.

Well, a human being can make a mistake once, even twice, perhaps three times, but
all your lives! That is not understandable. And it does not go well with the so-called
Western achievements in intellectual knowledge, science, technology. Because if you
have eyes to see, and if you are willing to understand, no civilisation, however high,
however glorious it may be, can last unless it is built on a foundation of moral
soundness, moral strength. This is not something which you do not know. All of you
know the history of the great civilisations of the past. It is foolish to think that only
today you have a civilisation in the West. More than that, it is arrogant. There have
been greater civilisations in the past, and all of you know that they fell because when
they reached the peak of power, lust took over, shameless lust took over, and the
civilisation collapsed.

I mention this only to tell you that it is not only personal evolution which is at stake,
it is a whole race which has to evolve. And pleasure and aspiration cannot possibly
ever go together. Spirituality says, if you seek pleasure, you die, whereas if you
aspire, you find pleasure in it. It is a higher pleasure, an eternal pleasure, whereas all
the rest that we see around us are transitory — transient, momentary pleasures. So I
wish to give you one piece of good news, that spirituality does not deny pleasure. It
only says, do not seek it in the physical, my friend! Because how long can you enjoy
physical pleasure? Seek that which can be enjoyed eternally.

So, that is the message of spirituality, and that is the assurance and the promise of
the spiritual life: that if we deny the lower life, we can get the higher life. So
spirituality takes away with one hand the small thing, to give you many times, a
million times, that same pleasure in a different way, in a different form. This is the
message of my Master, and we should try to understand these things, practice them and
fulfill our existence in the higher way.

Thank you.
 Questions & Answers
Vorauf, 30 June — 2 July 1986
 15
Meditation on the Form
Q: In some of his books Master refers to meditation on the form of the Master and
how beneficial it is. As we are told to meditate on divine light in the heart. this leads
to confusion sometimes ... ?

PR: Master has written in his books it was for himself alone, if I remember right. And
subsequently he has clarified in many places that we should follow the practice
prescribed. And the prescribed practice is meditation on light in the heart.
Subsequently he also clarifies that when the devotion for the Master is so great that the
form of the Master appears in the heart, then it is the right time to meditate on the form
of the Master. If we start meditating on the form before the form appears itself, by
itself, naturally, then it becomes artificial. What it really means is that the Master must
become the light of our life, then we find Him instead of the light; then is the
appropriate time.

The second thing is when the form appears, we must meditate on the full form, not
just on the face. That is from the foot up to the top of the head, everything must be
there. Now when it is artificial, and people take the form of the Master for meditation,
they take only the face. For the Master Babuji it was possible, because the moment he
saw Him he developed a hundred per cent devotion for Him. Therefore he could start
to do meditation on the form of his Master. It doesn't apply for all of us.

Then once I discussed with Master, there is a third stage. And that is when the form
also disappears from the heart. And I think we come to the stage which Master calls
light without luminosity. So we have the first stage which is light in the heart, when
people sometimes see the light itself as a luminous thing. As we advance it becomes
light without any features, just the idea of light is there.

So in the first stage we have a sort of refinement from the grosser light to the subtle
light. Then the idea of devotion brings the Master into the heart. And for most, if not
all abhyasis it stops with that. I mean the idea of the Master in the heart; the presence
of the Master goes on and on, you see.

The third stage, when the form also disappears, there is nothing in the heart, no
light, no form, nothing. That I think is a very difficult and very rare condition. It is also
very difficult, because to have to meditate on nothing or nothingness is almost
impossible. The other difficulty is we become attached in an emotional way to the
form of the Master, and we are not willing to give it up. I think the third stage is
possible only when we can love the Master without loving his form itself. I would
suggest that that is the requirement of all love; that the love of the form is transferred
to the love of the essence which has no form.
 16
Jealousy
Q: Which is the root for jealousy? How can we co-operate with the Master to let this
jealousy drop away'?

PR: I think we should call Dorothea to answer this question. Psychologist.. . Yes,
really, I would like to know what you think about it.

Dorothea: I do believe that if a little child cannot establish a relationship towards her
or his mother, then a certain psychological disturbance can arise in the little child
which prevents the child really from being able to communicate later on with other
persons. And this child has a deficit, it lacks something. Now, under such
circumstances, the child feels the need to compete with other persons and needs
confirmation, confirmation from the outside. There is no assurance for that child to be
loved by the outside world. There are further stages of evolution of this phenomenon
which is called jealousy, and these is one when the child is about three or four years
old. And then something will happen, I think. Now, at the age of three or four, the child
has to learn that there is essentially from that age on a triangular relationship between
the child and the mother and the father, and no longer the bilateral relationship which
has existed until then between the child and the mother. And many people do appear to
get stuck on that level of evolution, to stay at the evolution of three or four years. (That
is really, in terms of not being able to tolerate triangular relationships, that the person
gets stuck emotionally, in terms of emotional maturity. But otherwise the person
evolves).

Now this concerns the origin or the roots of that feeling or that negative emotion
which is called jealousy.

PR: What about the remedy? [laughter] Why do we get stuck at the age of three or
four? I agree, we have to get used to a triangular relationship, and we don't want that.
But surely, when we become adult, this should drop off?

Dorothea: Now, this has to do with the parental relationship. If one part of the
parents, either the mother or the father, tries to take possession of the child, if either
the father or the mother really binds the child in order to establish a bilateral and
exclusive relationship, then ex definitione, the child is unable to develop the capacity
of a triangular relationship.
PR: I agree. [laughter] But that is not the entire solution, you see. One of the intentions
of growing up — I'm not saying that we grow up intentionally, but we do grow up —
and one of the intentions or the aims of growing up is to forget these traumas of
childhood. Generally, in India we believe that when the first child is followed by the
second child, then the second child gets all the attention of the mother. So the first
child gets jealous.

I think that is what happens here in the Mission also. Because once we have the
first group of abhyasis, let us say in a particular city X. This group has a sort of a
group identity, it is as if it is one individual, and there are not many problems between
the members of that group. But when a second group starts forming, the members of the
first group become jealous of the members of the second group. This is my
observation. And what happens is, some of the members of the newer group are
absorbed into the first group, and they start becoming jealous of the remainder of the
second group, you see. So, my impression is — I mean, I'm not a psychologist, but this
is based on observation — my impression is that when your identity is threatened then
you become jealous of that which is the threat to your identity. And this is strengthened
when the preceptor or the Master gives more attention to the new members than to the
older members. It is necessary to give that attention. And I think it is a sign of maturity
that a senior or an advanced member should recognize that the new person needs more
attention, therefore he is getting more attention. It is a sign of the abhyasi's maturity.
So, my observation is that jealousy is not because of not getting something tangible
like progress, it is a craving for attention.

That is a sufficient answer for that question, because if you go further, it is

becoming psychological, analytical; it's not necessary.

At the root of that need for attention is always insecurity. Now, when we come to a
spiritual system like Sahaj Marg, this insecurity should not remain. Because we talk so
much of the Master and what he is doing for us, how he looks after us in a total way.
So, like almost all beliefs, these beliefs are with the intellect and not with the heart.
And therefore; these negative things persist even after years of abhyas. So, jealousy, if
it is there in an advanced level, it only shows lack of faith in the Master. It is rather
unfortunate, because it also shows that they are not aware of what they have got.
Because if they could see their inner condition, the spiritual condition, they would
understand what the Master has already done for them. And that would surely remove
all feelings of insecurity and therefore jealousy.

So, there is one very definite way of progressing out of this rather childish emotion,
and that is to try and maintain a diary, so that you know what you are getting, how
much you are developing, how much you are progressing. And that will help us to
separate the attention that we get from the progress that is given to us.

I often give the example of a doctor coming to a neighbour's house every day, you
see, and you are jealous that the doctor is coming to him, but not to us. But when we
understand that the doctor's attention is needed there because somebody is sick, then
we are relieved that the doctor is not coming to us.

So, what it really means is, there are two aspects to the preceptor's or the Master's
work: one is the attention that they give to the abhyasi to remove the effects, to remove
grossness and to bring them up to a certain level; the second is the progress that
everybody gets — deserving or undeserving — because that is by the grace of the
Master. So, if we attend to our progress, we will not be attentive to his attention to
others. And only at that stage this problem goes, finally. That's all.
 17
Praying for a Sick Person
Q: Can you say something about the right way to pray for a sick person?

PR: My general advice is that we should not distinguish between who deserves our
prayer and who doesn't deserve our prayer. I remember one family, two children were
sick. One was very sick, almost dying, and the other was not sick at all, you know, just
a little fever and things like that, and everybody was praying for this child which was
dying. The funny thing happened on the seventh day. The dying child started to recover
and the child which was not at all sick died. That is why it is wise to pray for all.
Because I don't think we are really competent to decide who is going, and if this going
can be stopped by praying.

The second thing is a little bit more difficult, because we are always concerned
with human sympathy, human love, things like that — is it right to pray at all for such
persons? Because if we have rightly understood the theory of samskaras, and that a
person's life takes a particular course because of the samskaras, then the right
understanding would seem to decide that we have no right to interfere in that process.
Of course, I'm now only talking about abhyasis, and it is very important to understand
this correctly because it has so many implications. People can ask, "What about social
welfare, what about this, that and the other?" This brings us to an important division in
our attitude: on one side we have the duty as human beings to help other human beings,
and that duty is always with us. On the other side, we have to accept the divine will as
the ultimate thing and leave it to it to decide what has to be done and not. I think the
difficulty in perceiving this division is what raises so many questions in the West.

And I'm referring to questions like people ask, "How can God be kind, if he is
allowing so many sufferings to take place?" It shows a very fundamental
misunderstanding of the whole situation. And real understanding comes only when we
have these Eastern ideas brought to us that a person is undergoing — let us not use the
word enjoying or suffering — he is undergoing the effect of his own samskaras. When
this is correctly understood, we know that each one of us is responsible for what he is
undergoing, not some God somewhere else. He has created his own situations. So,
when this spiritual understanding comes, now we realize that there is no God to be
either blamed or to be praised. And therefore, what can God do in that situation? All
that He can answer, if He wishes to answer, is, "My son, you created the situation in
which you are, I had no hand in it."
 Now I would like to come to the Sahaj Marg aspect of the whole thing: it is my
Master's teaching that God has no mind. The Ultimate, God, you see, has no mind.
(The mind is what, you know, relates to consciousness). So since he has no mind, how
can he hear our prayer or answer our prayer? Therefore, Sahaj Marg says, prayer to
God is useless. For two reasons: the first reason is, we are responsible for what we
are doing; the second reason is, He cannot hear and answer us.

Therefore, the ancient Eastern wisdom says that what God cannot do himself, he
sends a master to do for him. It is the belief of spiritual, shall we say, elevated souls
that the Master is God in a human form with a mind and heart. Therefore, he is able to
respond to our prayer, and he is able to have compassion for us, because he feels as a
human being what we are feeling as human beings.

It is almost impossible to feel sympathy or compassion for another life form. That
is one of the reasons for the callous way in which the rape of nature, as it is called, is
carried out. I know many people who have seen a chicken being cut, for instance —
you know, a live chicken being beheaded or a goat being killed — they cannot eat
meat afterwards. Incidentally, this is one reason why people at the lowest level of life,
villagers, common folk, they are more capable of love and sympathy than the one who
is shut up in a penthouse or an apartment house. Because he is isolated from all life, he
is therefore isolated from feelings.

It is common knowledge that the one who has suffered has sympathy for others who
are suffering. So, when the Divine descends in a human form, it is prepared to help us
by suffering with us this life in which we are stuck. So, the Master is a human being
who knows all about human life, human suffering and at the same time, he is divine in
his qualities, in his powers, in his essence. Therefore, he can help us to rise out of a
human situation and develop into the divine level of existence.

Therefore, coming back to the question of prayer, to whom should we pray, it is

wiser to pray to the Master than to God, for he is able to — even though he
understands that we are responsible for what we are undergoing — yet he is able to
sympathize with us, because he is also a human being. And it is that sympathy and
compassion which makes him release his divine powers to help us. Therefore, Master
has written in Voice Real — he refers to himself and asks the question — he says,
"Which God took pity on this miserable being? If anybody took pity on me, it was my
Master and my Master alone. And if I ever saw God, it was because of my Master."
Then he asks the most important question, "To whom should I therefore be grateful, to
God or to my Master?"
 So, we have to pray to the Master, and when our prayers are answered, we have to
be grateful to the Master, too. And I would just have one more comment: that this is
not any disrespect to God. Because it is to God as the Master that we pray.
Incidentally, this is an answer to the question I asked last year in Vorauf, why in our
prayer we say, "Oh Master!" and not, "Oh God."
 18
Deserving a Master
Q: Why does a human being deserve a Master to be sent by God?

PR: This is like why a mother should have compassion on her child. Because after all,
you see, there are two points. One is, we say that God is love, God is everything. But I
think the more important thing is that God is inside His creation as well as outside His
creation. That is why all mysticism says, God is in our heart, too. So when we suffer,
in some way God suffers with us. It is in the same way that we suffer, when our
children suffer, because we are part of our children, they are part of us. That is why it
is so easy to suffer when our children suffer, but we don't suffer for neighbours'
children.

So, in a philosophic sense we can say all suffering is because of the suffering the
self undergoes as part of the other person. One of our Upanishads says - you know
that is called the Prahadarnya Upanishad, it is the most famous Upanishad — a rishi
is telling his wife, "Not for the sake of the wife is the wife dear to the husband, my
dear, it is for the sake of the self in the wife that the wife is dear to the husband," you
see.

Now this is why, as long as this idea of 'I' and 'mine' persists, we suffer for all that
which is mine, like our business, our house. If my house burns down, I suffer, but I
don't suffer if my neighbour's house burns down, because past of me is not in that
house. I have not put anything into it, you understand? Now comes a very important
point: that if a man is dehimanised out of this feeling of 'I' and 'mine', he becomes
compassion-less, sympathy-less. But when you are in a right mystic path, and you are
progressively becoming divinized as we say, there is more and more of yourself in
everything else, not just in your family, not just in your house, but in the whole
universe at one stage. Because instead of just one wife being mine and five children
being mine and one house being mine, we begin to feel that all humanity is our
brothers and sisters, that everywhere whatever exists is ours. Because part of us is in
everything. So what happens is that instead of becoming dehimanised, as it has
happened in some systems, we become super-himanised. So, what happens is — now
I come to this young lady's, my sister's question — now what happens is, his
compassion extends to everything in the universe, his love extends to everything in the
universe.

What it really means is, there is no question of deservingness. He comes where he

is needed, we don't have to deserve it. And that is the greatest mercy of divinity.
Because if we would have to wait till we become deserving, he would never come to
us.
 19
Guilt
Q: 1) Sometimes abhyasis go through what one might call a dark period. Knowing our
behavior is not appropriate, we develop a tendency to avoid the Master because of
our feelings of shame. What is the best way to deal with such guilt feelings?

2) In Ram Chandra's autobiography volume two, reference is sometimes made to

Master cutting off the abhyasis' connection to the Divine on Lalaji's instructions. What
can make an abhyasi so guilty as to merit this? Can one become guilty by the weight of
one's samskaras, or can one only be guilty because it is an act of free will?

PR: Should we again have a psychologist to try and answer this question? No? There
is a saying in English, "Where ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise." It's a problem.
There is also the state of innocence as they call it, before the Garden of Eden in the
Christian tradition. If we relate these two ideas, we can perhaps come to the
conclusion that knowledge is what brings guilt into the picture. Knowledge of what?
Knowledge of what we should do and what we should not do.

It is a significant thing that when the fall of Adam and Eve came about, it was
because they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. And I think this knowledge was
precisely the knowledge of guilt. Before they ate the fruit they were perfectly happy,
they were doing the same things, but they were totally innocent of what they were
doing. But the moment they had the knowledge of what they could and could not do, or
should and should not do, they became culpable.

We can condense this idea and say that one of the prices we have to pay for
knowledge is guilt. When we are children we have no guilt because we still don't
know what is right and what is wrong. We just live, we just exist. That is why the
stage of childhood is called the stage of innocence. But when you grow up, and the
knowledge of what is right and what is wrong is acquired by us, the feeling of guilt or
its contrary — the feeling of having done one's duty, both come to us. So we can
conclude that there is a sense of guilt only when we do wrong knowingly. I don't think
anybody felt guilty about doing something wrong without knowing that it is wrong. It
never happens. We may feel embarrassed, we may feel even angry with ourselves, but
we don't feel guilty.

Now, when we have done something knowing that it is wrong to do it, and when it
is that knowledge that it is wrong that has given us the feeling of guilt, who is to be
blamed except ourselves? We have to correct ourselves.

Now it is a common human tendency to blame everything else for our problems.
Even when we eat something and we know it is not good to eat it, and then we fall
sick, we blame everything else. And that we do because we don't want to feel guilty.
And I think it is related to the ego, and the ego does not want to accept anything against
itself. In a sense, I may say that a sense of guilt or a feeling of guilt is the strongest
attack against our own egos. And therefore, there is a very strong reaction against
feelings of guilt.

Now what happens in the case of abhyasis? Like everybody, when we are children
we live in a state of natural innocence. Then it is possible we live for some years in a
state of ignorance, not so much innocence, but ignorance. Then comes the stage in
which we cannot be ignorant any longer, but we become wise and then comes the
feeling of guilt. And in abhyasis who have been conditioned by social conditions to
accept what they are doing is right, the feeling of guilt comes, when they know it was
wrong and it could never have been right. That is the moment when we understand that
society does not give us the permission to behave as we choose, it is our conscience
which has to give us this permission. And depending on what we have done, the
feeling of guilt may be weak, may be very strong, may be unbearable.

Now it is a fortunate thing that one can feel guilty only about what has happened.
So here is where the mercy of the Master comes and he says, "Don't worry about what
has happened, this is in the past, you cannot possibly correct it or change it now. But
you can certainly make amends for it, repent for it, by correcting yourself now." And
Babuji adds the very, very important advice that if you go on dwelling on your guilt,
you are deepening the impressions of what you have already done and making stronger
and stronger samskaras. So, Babuji says, "Repent for what you have done." And a true
repentance consists not in saying "I repent! I repent!" a thousand times, but in
determining once and for all not to commit the mistakes again. And what about
removing the effects of the thing we have done? That is taken care of in the cleaning.
So, in our system of Sahaj Marg, we have a very healthy way of handling guilt, and it
is not only healthy, it is the most effective.

Now we come to one interesting point. In our groups all over Europe and in the
West, there are many people who have come out of the Christian tradition. The
interesting thing is that all of them left the church because of the fact or because of
their feeling that the church made them feel guilty. Now I was not only amused but
astonished at the immense capacity of the human mind to transfer its own guilt to
something else. I think this begins with our youth, when we cross the age of three and a
half or four, that this capacity develops in us to transfer the blame to somebody or
something else. From the time we are little boys or girls this starts, always the blame
is on somebody else, it's not ours. Now this is not a very wonderful discovery, we all
know it, but what is interesting about it is that the very people who left the church,
because of feelings of guilt are unable to leave Sahaj Marg because of these feelings
of guilt. Do you know why? It is because a church is a mindless, soulless organisation,
and it is easy to blame such an organisation and get away with it. In effect we are
blaming God.

But when we come to Sahaj Marg, and we are taught and we believe and we accept
the teaching that it is our samskaras which make us responsible for our existence, then
we have to face the blame very squarely for the first time ourselves. Therefore, the
feelings of guilt are much more terrible in a spiritual system. Why? Because we cannot
possibly run away from ourselves. It is easy to run away from the home or from the
church or even from your country, but where can you run away from yourself?

So, that is as far as the situation is concerned. How to change it? We know very
well, you see. Do the cleaning better, forget the feeling of guilt and deposit even that
feeling with the Master. And then take the next very important, but more difficult step
of changing your way of life, so that in the future there should be no guilt. The way is:
right thought, leading to right action, leading to feelings of satisfaction, achievement
and ability to face the self and say, "Yes, you are good," and then progress.

Now, of course, in religion they also have tried this, especially in the Catholic
tradition, by this confession you know, when you go to a priest and confess. I believe
it has not worked out for several reasons. The first reason is that you feel that when
you have confessed you are free to do all the things all over again and make a
confession next week. The second reason is more important. It makes us feel ashamed
of ourselves; we have to talk about what we have done to somebody else. So, in that
tradition, the confession adds instead of removing our guilt. It adds a sense of freedom
to repeat your own mistakes again and adds to the burden of shame, and nothing is
removed. Those of you who have read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment will be
familiar with the way he has treated this psychological problem.

Now, what is the beauty of our system? Because it is beautiful, it is glorious, and it
is the most compassionate system, if you will understand how it works. There is no
need of any confession here. The Master does not wish to know any details of what
we have done. On the contrary without knowing anything, he gives us a blank cheque.
"Anything you may have done does not matter, I shall take care of it. But in future, you
have to be correct." What it amounts to is that in one grand act of compassion he
removes all the effects of the past and opens up a future for you.

I would like to repeat a story I have repeated so many times about a young man
who came to see Dr. Varadachari. The young man was weeping very much, you see,
very bitterly. "What is the matter with you?" The boy came and fell down before Dr.
Varadachari and said, "I have sinned, please help me." Dr. Varadachari became very
angry. He said, "Sinned? What sin have you committed? Have you eaten some meat or
drunk a bottle of wine or gone with some girl? Which fool has not done these things?
What is it that you have done which is so wonderful that you have to weep over it?
Come to me when you have done something original." You see, the wisdom of how he
handled that young man, because he gave him the feeling that what he had done was
not something wonderful, everybody is doing it. But don't continue to do it.

Now this is something very important we have to understand: that as far as the
Master in Sahaj Marg is concerned, He has no concern with our past. He has the
immense capacity to remove every bit of samskara from us in one second. But Babuji
always insisted that once you have come, now you have to follow and obey a certain
way of living, if you are interested in your own future. So he gives us the freedom of
deciding whether we want to change, and if we want to change, he is willing to assist
us, but on condition that we follow what he says we should do. And he made it very
clear several times, "I have nothing to do with what you have already done, but I have
everything to do with what you have to do. And therefore, whatever I say must be
done, you see, in your own interest, please remember this."

This is the most important thing we have to remember, we come here for our
benefit, and if we are sincerely interested in our own future, we have to conform to
certain things. Now I would like to draw your attention to one of the most remarkable
features of Sahaj Marg. It is the Ten Maxims of Sahaj Marg. When you compare it with
other systems, you find its immense wisdom, its immense generosity, its immense
compassion. Why? Because it tells you what to do, and not what not to do. And its
compassion lies in the fact that it gives you a set of norms by which to live, which if
you are not able to do, there's no feeling of guilt attached to it. So that is a master-
stroke of the Master, you see. That he could give us a code of conduct which would
never make us feel guilty, even if you could not achieve it. And what is its wisdom? It
tells you exactly what should be done, there is no confusion.

So this is the greatness of the Sahaj Marg system, that it links a wise way of
teaching with a compassionate way of dealing with us, with the ultimate promise of
the highest goal of achievement that can be available to us. And my Master has
assured me many times that when the abhyasi tries his best, he's always taken up,
irrespective of the result he achieves. And that is an act of love. Because what it
amounts to is that he tells us, "You do it, I'll give you the results." So to put it in a very
trite way, we are even relieved of the responsibility of the result for our actions. That
is why I always say, no, we have no miracles in Sahaj Marg — the progress of every
abhyasi is a miracle. Because what we do, even the most willing of us, it's so little,
and what we get is so tremendously enormous. So that is the answer to the question
about guilt, very long, but I like to explain so many things which involves Sahaj Marg
in giving an answer, you see.

Now the second question was something to do with Babuji cutting off the
connection of abhyasis on the instructions of Lalaji. That is something I cannot explain
now. Except to say one thing, and that is, that when the need to do such a thing arises,
the most anguished person is the Master Himself. And if an abhyasi claims to love his
Master the minimum thing he can do is to conduct himself in such a way that he would
never give the Master this anguish of cutting him away, you see. Also it is morbid to
think of the negative side. So let us think of the positive, the glorious ... how we can be
eternally connected with the Master, how we can enjoy his eternal beneficence, how
we can enjoy his eternal love. Why should we think about a connection which can be
cut? Because we are not, I'm sure, thinking of behaving in such a way that he's going to
cut us off.

Only one concluding remark ... that abhyasis show fear of such things only when
they are not able to change themselves or are not willing to change themselves. This
attitude we should give up. You know, we are all citizens of this world. We don't go
around asking, "Can I be jailed? Can I be put in jail?" We don't ask. It is a matter of
simple psychology. Suppose I'm at the airport in Munich, and I like a chair, and I ask
you, "If I take away this chair, can I be put in jail?" It means I'm thinking of taking it
away, you see. Therefore, whenever I see somebody who is afraid of any specified
consequence, it is a clear indication he is proposing to do it, and therefore he is afraid
of the consequence. It is a hint to the preceptors. that on such occasions t hey should
do intensive cleaning of such abhyasis.

Thank you.
 20
Family Life
Q: In Sahaj Marg the importance of family life is emphasized (rather than withdrawal
from all worldly life). Does this mean one should have one's own family, i.e.
husband/wife, children?

PR: Master has written about the sannyasis that they who come to the sannyasi way of
life, they are just living off society. See, they have no love for anybody, they have
nothing to sacrifice, society provides them anything. But a man or a woman, when they
many, they marry because of love, they have children because of love, and then when
you have a family, it is natural to give up even your own needs for the sake of the
children, so sacrifice develops. So that's why a family life is so necessary, according
to our Sahaj Marg principles. But I don't think that our young sister really asked what
she wanted to ask. If she wishes to ask another question, she is welcome.

Q: Well, I mean, there are many single abhyasis ...

PR: I know the question, I know the question — but I can only answer the question
you ask. You see, she wanted to ask about, about those who are unmarried, should they
get married, or, I think behind that question is: does a sex life alone satisfy the
requirements of a family life? The answer is no. Because a sex life is not a family life.
Family means two people committed to each other's welfare, loving each other,
prepared to die for each other. That is, the last one — prepared to die for each other
— is precisely the growth of sacrifice, the development of sacrifice. In a common law
association that you find today that requirement is not met. That is, if you go back to
the original question of love and anger and greed and avarice and lust.

The modern form of relationship is a human creation. It only satisfies desire and
lust. It doesn't fulfill the requirement of love, anger and sacrifice. So when we accept
love as a divine attribute, and we have understood that the highest expression of love
is the highest sacrifice that we can possibly make, then we will understand that any
form of expression of love which has no bearing on sacrifice is not that divine love. If
it is not divine, it is human. Therefore many people ask, "Marriage is only a piece of
paper — what difference does it make?" I think I referred to this in one of our Munich
meetings last year. It is generally the man who asks this question — not the woman. So
I ask then, "Why not? If it is just a piece of paper, why not do it? Why are you so
afraid of this piece of paper?" That is answer enough, you see, I don't need to expand
on this.
Q: But there are sometimes also people who have professions that are sewing
humankind. They are working for people, even if they are not married, and they have
no own family. Can't they achieve sacrifice in the sense of spiritual development?

PR: In Babuji's way, the answer is, that the question contains the answer in itself. In
what way? If service is out of love, and there is real sacrifice behind it, yes, it can
lead to spiritualization. But today it is all materialistic, even the so-called noble
services, doctors, nurses — it's materialistic. It's not a criticism of this profession; it
only shows how difficult they are to practice in a real way. It is my understanding that
if a doctor really considers his service as service and sacrifices his comfort, his life
itself — he should die every time a patient dies. Not physically, but something in him
should die with that part. If there is such a doctor, he will be a saint. But nowadays,
you know, the patient dies, a sheet of linen is put over his face, and everybody walks
out to have a cup of coffee.

So, it's not that I'm criticizing, but it only shows in every walk of life there is the
highest way of doing a thing, and there is the lowest way of doing a thing. It's also true
of so-called 'gurus', not only doctors. And what is the difference? In the highest way
there is a commitment to that or to the person you serve. In the lowest way the
commitment doesn't exist. You find this everywhere. Your fridge is not working, a
mechanic will come and change a nut and goes away, and it still doesn't work. But he
says, "I have done what I was asked to do." Another man will come to do everything
which is necessary to put it right. He is committed to your welfare.

The same thing applies to gurus, you see; there are gurus who come just to collect
your money and your donations, without any commitment to your welfare. And there
are masters, like my Master Babuji, who came and killed himself for your sake. That
was total commitment to your spiritual welfare, irrespective of what he got or what he
had to suffer — the highest sacrifice.

And if you come back to the human relationship between a male and a female, a
mere association of two is like a service contract. It has no commitment, there is no
question of the welfare of the other partner; it is a satisfaction of a mutual need of lust.
And many people have remained bachelors or spinsters in their — I can only say —
misunderstanding that they can give more service or better service to humanity that
way. But if you take an example — I'm telling you from my observation — the highest
sacrifice, in the case of nuns, for instance ... Next time you see a nun, look at her eyes.
You will find they are like glass — there is no life. Very rarely I have found a nun with
living human eyes, moist, like we have. Because in the same way most of them have
run away from existence into another life. And however much they may have
sacrificed — it's in some way impotent, in every sense of that word.

That's why Master has emphasized that Sahaj Marg means the natural way. And
love and sacrifice must come in a natural way too, through the family environment,
where all needs are fulfilled: the need for emotion, reciprocal love, reciprocal
growth, reciprocal understanding — all this must be fulfilled. Therefore, however
much you love a refrigerator or a computer — there is no reciprocation from that
which you love. That is what makes that lover's sacrifice unproductive. That's why
you use the word 'impotent' as non-productive effort. So that's the answer.

It's still possible of course, but very rarely, that through service and sacrifice alone
we can become spiritual. But that is when all knowledge of the self is lost. But even in
nuns, who love God, as they claim, if this normal human fulfillment is not there — in
some way they are lacking, and it is not a full life. I believe that like life evolves, love
must also evolve from a certain basic situation of self-love, to the next stage of love of
others, to the third stage of love of all, to the last stage of love of God. The nun is
trying to reverse it. By coming from the love of God alone it doesn't work.

The family life achieves this in a very natural way. I think even the churches are
coming to recognize this, because I hear that perhaps priests and nuns will be allowed
to marry. If it is true, it is a belated recognition of the fact that nature must be used to
transform or transcend nature. Nature cannot be destroyed to overcome nature.
Transcending nature is not overcoming nature. This must be understood very carefully.
 21
Anger and Greed
Q: In the book Face to Face it is said that anger cannot be totally eradicated, but
greed can be totally eradicated. Please comment.

PR: Master has said that kama and krodha, that means love and anger, these are
divine attributes. But moha and lobha, as they are called in Sanskrit, that is, desire
and greed or avarice — they are our own creations. One aspect of the fundamentals of
Sahaj Marg, is that we should destroy our own creation. Therefore, desire and greed,
which are our own creation, we should destroy. My Master has not asked us to destroy
divine attributes. And when we speak specifically of anger and love, they are very
necessary for us in dealing with our existence. And what is the purpose? I asked
Master once. He told me that without love there would be no idea of going back to our
Home or reaching our Original Maker. Because it is love that makes a son go back
home in the evening, or a wife go back home in the evening, and it is that love that will
finally take us back to our Original Destination, our Home, as we call it, too.
Therefore, we are all born with the capacity for love.

It is also said, that we are born because of love, and we should die in love of God.
And in between birth and death, it is love that guides our life. So love is a very
necessary thing, it guides the entire creation, let us say. The word creation being used
in its widest possible sense, that is, as representing the entire universe, manifested and
unmanifested universe. And Sahaj Marg and my Master, they teach us that therefore,
love is very necessary, but it has to be guided in the right direction. And this is what
we are trying to do in meditation, constant remembrance, cleaning and all these things.

People who are concerned with things like crime, violence, even they today
understand that it is misdirected love that goes around all these. And therefore, like all
the powers of nature, love has both its constructive and its destructive aspects. So it is
the purpose of a spiritual way to refine our existence in such a way, that the
constructive force is used, and the destructive force is eliminated. We have the same
problems in harnessing the powers of nature, harnessing the inventions of science and
technology, and when we come to human nature, we have the same problem.

So that is in substance the idea that love is a necessary thing, but it must be refined
and goal-oriented to enable us to achieve the purpose of our existence. Therefore,
love should not be destroyed, and fortunately it cannot also be destroyed.
 As far as anger is concerned, what is the need for it? Master's answer was that
anger in its pure sense, not to be confused with rage or other violent ways of
expression, I can't find the right words for it — it provides what can be considered the
motor-force in cleaning up all that is wrong. That is, in its pure form, anger functions
against all ungodly manifestations in nature. So anger should not be used against each
other for destructive purpose, or things like that.

I can give you a clarification. When we become violent, we say we are angry, but
it's not correct. Violence is violence, it has nothing to do with anger. A man can be
coldly violent, you know, like a man who determines to murder somebody, and
without any excitement, without any rage, without any anger, like some of these
psychopaths, you cannot say that they destroy in anger. But they are violent,
nevertheless.

So anger in its pure form need not result in any action, in physical action, it's a pure
— like love, you know, in a pure form. I have said so many times that love need not be
expressed, should not be expressed. I'll take that up next! We have seen in Babuji, as
in all spiritually developed persons, that both love and anger are there, but you never
see them. Of course, I expect all of you to say, "No, you are wrong, Chari, because we
have felt His love." Precisely; we feel, but we don't see! So these things are not to be
seen, they are only to be felt. So when we become angry in the right way, that is why it
is called righteous anger, the effect of it should be felt, but it should not be seen as
violence or violent behavior or unseemly behavior or things like that.

What is the way in which righteous anger manifests and what we call violent anger
manifests? Righteous anger leads to reformation; violent anger leads to revolution.
The same thing happens when the anger is against ourselves. If it is right anger, we
proceed to develop ourselves, change ourselves in the right way to become better and
better. But when the anger of the self against the self becomes a violent thing, it can
even lead to suicide, for instance. As an example, we can say, when the power of the
atom is harnessed in the right way, you can illuminate whole cities, manufacture
energy for whole cities. But when it explodes, it destroys whole cities.

So to sum up the whole discussion, anger is a corrective force to be used for

correcting; love is a creative force to be used to take us to our goal. Therefore, they
are both necessary in our existence.
 22
Praying to Jesus
Q: Can a prayer addressed to Jesus with innocence and love be effective?

PR: The answer is yes. I gave you, I think, some suggestion the other day that when
you pray, suppose the man has no master, has no saint whom he can approach. Yet the
prayer, if it is sincere, if it comes from the heart, it is always answered, because it
seems to be redirected to some sort of an automatic exchange, unmanned exchange to a
manned exchange, and it is always answered. But if you insist on getting the help only
from Jesus, or whoever it is, then it can fail. The reason is because now you are
limiting Divine power to something that you want and are not accepting it in the way
in which it should be given to you.

That is why my Master said, those who have no master should pray directly to God,
without any name given to God. It is the idea of God. And then we get the Master, and
subsequently we pray to Him for all things. But sincere prayers are always answered,
let us say - in some way or the other. It may not be in the way we want, but they are
answered. For example, if a hungry man prays for food, and he wants pizza or ice
cream, he may not get it, but he will surely get bread and butter.
 23
Dealing with Illness
Q: What is the right way to deal with illness?

PR: Why is there no question of how to handle health? There should be, if everything
is samskara. The question arises because we have a tendency to accept all the good
things that happen to us as ours, and all the bad things as given to us by some non-
benign providence or our samskaras. My Master once told me that people are willing
to give him all their illness, their misery, their poverty, but nobody is willing to give
him their wealth, their riches, their happiness. He said it is like two friends sharing a
banana. One man peels it and eats the fruit and gives the skin to the other person.
Somebody asked Babuji, "What is the right way?" He said, "Well, either give me both
or keep both." So that is the answer. The other thing is, when we are sick, we should
leave it to the doctor.
 24
Duty
Q: There can be conflicting situations between one's duty to the family and one's duty
towards spiritual development. For example the husband doesn't accept that the wife
is meditating. Is there a guideline how to handle such a situation?

PR: Very long question. [laughter] The first answer is, that there is only one duty.
There is not such a thing as a duty to the family, a duty to day, or a duty to night. We
are governed by duty. No, that answer is complete in itself. But just to explain a little
further, I will answer more and tell you that if you are satisfied with just doing the duty
to others — there is no problem. We want to satisfy others, make others happy also.
That's where all this problem comes.

There used to be a time in England, when you had what is called a 'baker's dozen'.
When you came to a baker and asked for a dozen breads, you actually got thirteen
loaves of bread — one bread extra. Why I say it — because it is of course a joke also
— when you have plenty of time and plenty of resources you can do more than what is
necessary. In those days there was plenty of wheat, less population. So the baker could
give you one loaf more, every time you took a dozen breads. That was to please the
customer.

Similarly, when we have nothing else to do, we are welcome to please our
relations with more than what is necessary to be done. But now we are in a situation
where we have less and less time, and more and more to do. That is one thing.

The other is: You have also a duty to yourself. And spiritual wisdom has always
said, unless you do your duty to yourself, you cannot possibly do your duty to others.
The principle is the same, like we have a right, almost I say a divine right, to have our
needs fulfilled, but not our wants.

Similarly our duty is also to be limited to what has to be done as a duty and no
more. So I repeat, it is our anxiety to please that harms us, not the performance of duty
itself. One concept in Sahaj Marg which is most appropriate in this context is that a .
The final answer is given in Autobiography of Ram Chandra volume two, and you
should all read it. One concept in Sahaj Marg which is most appropriate in this
context is that a transmission must be of the exact dosage that is necessary. Just
because you love an abhyasi you cannot go on transmitting. There is always the
consideration of the deservingness of the abhyasi, and the second consideration is of
the abhyasi's capacity to absorb the transmission. I would suggest this idea of dosage
should also be considered as appropriate to our duty. What is necessary should be
done and no more.

There is also another concept about friends. I've told you this many times before,
because very often when this question of duty and responsibility to family comes, it is
really the friends who are involved. Master has said the only friend is the Master,
because the spiritual definition of friend is one who is willing to give his life for you,
and the Master is doing this every time he transmits. That is why it is called pranasya
pranah, the life of life.

Another idea I would suggest in this same context. Master once said that we should
be grateful for everything that we receive. But it is impossible to go about expressing
our gratitude to everything that we have got. Yes, you know, you cannot say thank you
to the chicken for giving the egg, thank you to the tree for giving the fruit, thank you to
the field for giving the potatoes, it's not possible. So we fulfill our duty to everything
in one grand act of gratitude to the Master: "Thank you, Master, for everything I've
received." Because in spirituality we believe that we can't get anything which the
Master will not permit us to take. So the chickens may lay their eggs, but we would
not get any unless the Master wishes us to. You see, this is not a joke, because if you
consider that when you pray to Master you get everything, why don't you pray to the
chicken, why not to the cow and to the tree?

You see, this is the spiritual law that what you get does not depend on what nature
produces. Nature produces in profusion, but we will not get until He permits us. I'm
trying to suggest that we should look at duty the same way, and when we perform our
duty to the Master, all our duty is over. He looks after the rest for our sake, He even
looks after our duties for us.

This is nothing but again going back to the idea of surrender, that even our duty we
surrender to the Master. Because what we do in surrender is to surrender ourselves,
the self is surrendered; when the self has gone, now whose is the duty? So the
existence of these conflicts indicates the existence of the 'I'.

Thank you very much.